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SWITZERLAND

IN SUNSHINE

AND SNOW .

FAMOUS CASTLES AND PALACES OF ITALY.

By E. B. d'Auvergne. Illustrated. 16s. net.

HEROINES OF GENOA.

By Edgcumbe Staley. Illustrated. 12s. 6d. net.

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IN CASTLE AND COURTHOUSE: Being Re-
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OFF THE MAIN TRACK.

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net.

THE MYSTIC BRIDE.

By Mrs Aubrey Richardson. Illustrated. 12s. 6d.
net.

THE AEROPLANE-PAST, PRESENT AND
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• » a • • •

t let fjf »■ t t r t < t < *

SWITZERLAND

IN SUNSHINE AND SNOW

EDMUND B. D'AUVERGNE

AUTHOR OF

"THE ENGLISH CASTLES," "FAMOUS CASTLES AND PALACES

OF ITALY," ETC.

ILLUSTRATED WITH THIRTY-SIX PLATES
IN COLOUR AND HALF-TONE

LONDON
T. WERNER LAURIE

CLIFFORD'S INN

> • ■ »

• • • «

• . . • •

CONTENTS

PAGE

The Federal Capital i

Neuchatel 20

The Pays de Vaud 42

Chillon . 61

In Arcadia . 73

The Valais 83

The Dogs of St Bernard 100

The Guides 106

An Old Swiss Watering-Place . . . ,112
Lucerne, To-Day and Long Ago . . . .127

The Lion of Lucerne 146

Little Journeys from Lucerne . . . .164

In the Land of Tell 188^

Einsiedeln 204

The Bernese Oberland 220

Canton Glarus 241

The Lowlands of Switzerland .... 256

The Protestant Rome . ' 269

Winter in the Alps 276

Winter Sports 293

263030

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Jungfrau

Berne

The Bagpiper Fountain, Berne

The Bruggler Fountain, Berne

Neuchatel

Lausanne

Vevey ....

Gathering Narcissus at Montreux

Chillon {Colour)

Gruyeres

Sign ....

Marjelen See

The Bonspiel Wengen

Baden in Aargau

Wasserthurm, Lucerne

Old Bridge, Lucerne

Lake of Lucerne

The Nebelmeer, Rigi

View from Summit of the Rigi

At St Beatenberg .

The Rink, Kandersteg

Frontispiece

To face

page 4

))

JX . „

»>

>»

5»

104

112

128

140

♦ M

146

164

176

• • M

»)

188

200

Vll

List of Illustrations

The Lutschine

Lake of Thun

Kandersteg .

Lake of Wallenstadt

Lenthal (Glarus) .

Soleure

Zurich

Ile de Salagnon {Colour)

MiJRREN

Pontresina {Colour) .
Davos
Bobsleighing .

St Beatenberg
Ski-Jumping .

To face

page

212

j»

226

230

236

240

»»

248

256

i >)

262

269

))

272

J»

»>

276

280

288

»5

294

300

Note. — The Illustrations marked Wehrli are from pictures supplied by
Messrs Wehrli A. — G of Kilchberg-Zurich.l Those by Mr J. W. McLennan
are inserted by kind permission of "Continental Travel Ltd."

VIU

The Federal Capital

One, we observe with pleasure, has sHpped out
and is making off quietly ; but another is being
conveyed with obvious gusto and deliberation
by the ogre into his capacious mouth — the next
instant you realise that the tender limbs will be
cracked between his opening jaws. The whole
thing is very realistically done. Horrible cannibal,
who are you — some hated baron of the Ober-
land ? No, the features are Jewish, and the
group evidently relates to the legends circulated
in the sixteenth century about child sacrifices
by the Hebrews.

A monument more pleasing to the Chosen
People should be the Samson Fountain, which,
like all these compositions, is full of vigour.
The pleasant-faced giant is wrenching open the
jaws of a lion which gapes as with astonishment.
Samson seems about to extract a tooth. Then
there is the fountain bearing the statue of the
gentle dame Seller, the founder of the Insel
Hospital, and the fine Renaissance figure of Jus-
tice on the Gerechtigkeits brunnen. This dates
from 1543. Younger by two years is the Archer
Fountain, representing the gaily-uniformed
soldier of the period. He is accompanied by
a httle bear as his esquire. Bears ! Berne
delights to honour them ! They meet your eye
at every turn. Here is Bruin again, very fine and
martial, armed cap-a-pie and upholding a banner,
i He marches in procession, you will have observed,

Switzerland

round the column of the KindHfresser ; he up-
holds each comer of the monument to the victor
of Laufen ; you will see him on the cathedral
terrace acting as page to the bronze effigy of
Berchtold of Zahringen. Feeling that she has
not done enough to honour him, Berne has
given him a new fountain all to himself in the
Barenplatz. There, in white marble, bears of all
sorts and sizes clamber and prowl round the apex
of a column on which triumphantly stands the
head bear, evidently king of the castle.

Everybody, I take it, loves bears, and I for
one can understand why the Bernese never tire
of them. Since 1400 or thereabouts a number
of these jolly animals have been maintained at
the city's expense, just as the Romans have
kept wolves and as we ought to keep lions. The
French inhumanly carried off these wards of
Berne, and one of them, Martin, unpatriotically
condescended to become the pet of the Parisians.
But in 18 15 the republic recovered its bears,
and there you can see their descendants to this
day, very properly housed in a commodious den
just across the Nydeckbriicke. They are very
fine beasts, and do credit to their masters and
to the liberality of the tourists, who never tire
of bombarding them with bread and carrots.
The bears do not tire of being bombarded either.
At times they will cHmb a pole for their admirers'

entertainment, but they usually receive favours

The Federal Capital

prone on their broad, shaggy backs. They are
good-tempered enough, but will not submit to
insult. A good many years ago an English
tourist, after copious potations of beer, thought
it would be excellent fun to go down into the pit
one night and give the oldest bear a scare.
Bruin growled when disturbed in his sleep, but
retired farther into his den. There the English-
man was rash enough to follow him, and paid for
his temerity with his life. It is only under such
provocation that our friend the bear loses his
naturally placid temper, which is usually main-
tained on a vegetarian diet. These animals are
still to be found wild in some of the mountain
chains of eastern Switzerland, and even there
they are barbarously persecuted. They are
handsome, well-meaning brutes, and ask only
to be let alone. The human race is not so
interesting or amiable that we can afford to do
without our four-footed brothers.

A counter-distraction to the bear pit is pro-
vided by the Clock Tower in the Kramgasse, now
in the heart of the city, but in Berchtold's time
its western hmit. It contains a clock built in
1527 and restored about sixty years later.
Three minutes before each hour a wooden cock
crows and flaps his wings. The visitor's atten-
tion having been thus arrested, a procession of
bears armed with cross-bows issues from the
interior of the clock and marches round the figure

Switzerland

of old Father Time. The rooster again crows ;
the hour is struck by a jester with cap and bells.
Father Time raises his sceptre and beats time,
turns his hour-glass, and opens his mouth,
while a bear bows before him ; the cock crows
for the third time ; and the exhibition is over
for another hour. \\Tio would csLrry a watch
when the time of day is impressed upon him by
such agreeable devices ?

It will have been seen that there is much of
the musical-box, cuckoo-clock character about
the capital of S\\itzerland, a sur\ival of the
quaint, childhke humour of the Middle Ages.
But the grimmer humour of those da}'s may
be tasted in the wonderful Historical Museum,
with its remarkable collection of headsman's
axes, each of which has chopped off a hundred
heads, and the seven hundred and fifty halters
which Charles the Bold had thoughtfully pro-
vided for the Swiss. These fell into the hands
of his intended victims at ^lorat or Grandson,
and are now proudly displayed among the
banners, swords, lances and other trophies of
those glorious fields. Seven hundred and fift}^
halters ! W^y not seven hundred or eight
hundred ? One marvels at such precision in
such a matter. Probably the duke decided
that fifteen hundred Swiss would be a very
proper holocaust, and economically allowed one
halter for two men.

u a » > > >

ijv

' , > » 5 1

» 1 a ' »

The Briiggler Fountain, Berne.

The Federal Capital

The piety of the hardy, haughty Bernese is
1 represented by the Miinster, begun in 1421,
and finished in 1590. It is largely the work of
one of the architects of Strassburg Cathedral,
and certainly reminds one of that famous fane.
On the portal is illustrated the legend of the
Wise and Foolish Virgins. It does not seem
to have been taken to heart by the Protestants,
who have swept the inside of this glorious church
bare of all adornment and left no lamps shining
there.

The minster stands high and nobly above the
Aar, here spanned by the beautiful Kirchenfeld
bridge. Far below the river foams and eddies
round rocks and the stout knees of washerwomen.
The steep slopes are largely overgrown with
gardens and plantations, and are less bare than
when the startled horse of Weinzapfii jumped
the parapet and was dashed to pieces below,
leaving his rider sprawling but unhurt to live
for half-a-century longer.

The dignity of Berne is expressed in the
white Federal Palace — Curia Confoederationis
Helveticae, as the lettering over the fa9ade
describes it — which rises so proudly above the
Aar and seems to have caught some of the
white majesty of the mountains opposite. Here
since 1848 the Government of the republic has
at last found a permanent habitation, after
having been shifted from Baden to Frauenfeld,

Switzerland

from Zurich to Lucerne, and back again so often]
in the course of ages. Zurich surpasses all]
other Swiss towns in population and wealth,!
Geneva claims a vague intellectual superiority,
but no one need dispute with Berne her political
supremacy. Certainly it has brought her noj
very substantial increase in wealth or power.]
The representatives of the cantons come here
to transact their political business as expedi-
tiously as possible, and, I should judge, with as
little personal expenditure. You may see groups
of them lunching or dining at the railway!
buffet, looking, some of them, as if they had!
come straight from the plough. I doubt if the!
institution of tea on the terrace is known to.
them ; they would be shocked if their house of'
assembly were referred to as the finest or the
worst club in Europe. Republican simplicity
reigns at Berne, if nowhere else in the world.
Visiting the administrative buildings attached
to the parliament house I noticed the word
" Bundesprasident " (President of the Con-
federation) inscribed over an inconspicuous door,
just as you might see the word " Cashier " or
" District Registrar." I called to mind how
an important English railway contractor once
knocked at this door and was answered by a
man in shirt sleeves, whom he took to be a clerk.
It was the President himself. In the hall of
the Council of State I sat in this functionary's

The Federal Capital

chair, and, so far from rebuking my presumption,
the attendant poHtely inquired if I was fatigued !
A sitting of the Swiss Parhament I have not
assisted at. From the arrangement of the
Chamber and the character of the representa-
tives, I should imagine its proceedings to be
dignified and business-hke. Here men come to
make laws for the betterment of their country,
not to discuss mediaeval precedents and play the
party game. I wonder whether the art of
blocking bills is understood at Berne, and if
they know how to shelve measures passed by a
majority of two-thirds of the House. But here,
of course, the Cabinet is appointed by the re-
presentatives themselves and has to respect
their wishes.

The importance of this pretty little city by
the Aar is more than national. Close to the
railway station I noticed a plate beside an in-
conspicuous door bearing the words, " Union
postale universelle." The Swiss capital is also
the world's postal headquarters. Here are
settled the colossal accounts which the nations
run up against each other for money orders,
telegraph charges, and the transport of parcels.
The work in this international clearing house
must be tremendous. A German waiter sends
five shillings from a post-office in Soho to his
mother in the Harz mountains, and sooner or

later England and Germany must square ac-
B 17

Switzerland

counts here. Not less complicated must be the
transactions disentangled at the International
Railway Clearing House not far away. It is
so easy a matter to book yourself or a bale of
goods from Lisbon to Odessa. You never ask
yourself over whose lines you are travelling.
You paid your good money at Lisbon, and are
free from further liability. And the price of
your ticket must be divided up by a clerk at
Berne between a score of different companies
and governments in strict proportion to the
distance you have travelled on the lines of each.
See how these nations treat one another ! — even
when they are at enmity, for here is the head-
quarters of the society of the Red Cross, whose
emblem will be respected when all other treaties
and conventions have been torn to shreds.

Berne stands for international comity, for
the triumph of law and humanity above petty
racial rivalries. Herself the keeper of a pact
between three widely distinct peoples, she
willingly acts as umpire and broker for the rest
of the world. Her calm, practical adjustment of
such vast European interests points the way to
the unification of the nations. Since a world's
postal union is possible, why not a world's
customs union ? Since the nations have
pledged themselves to respect the Red Cross
flag, why not pledge themselves to respect aU
flags and to refer their differences, as they refer

The Federal Capital

their railway disputes, to Berne or to The Hague ?
Since German Cathohcs, French Protestants, and
Itahan Free-thinkers can submit to one law
because it is just, do not politicians and jour-
nalists He when they dismiss the United States
of Europe as an empty dream ?

NEUCHATEL

Neuchatel is a dull place with an interesting
history. As you first see it from the train,
thundering and whistling among the gorges
of the Jura, it looks picturesque enough, seated
by its broad expanse of lake. It forms indeed
one of the finest approaches to Switzerland from
the west. I remember that the unexpected
beauty of the scene very keenly affected some
of my fellow-passengers. There were a young
Irish couple, for instance, who were so fond of
each other that an elderly English lady doubted
if they could be lawfully married. When they
caught sight of the lake they clutched each
other's hands, and the man, in a rich, soft accent,
murmured something to the girl about home
and the Bay of Dublin. Not wishing to disturb
a love scene, I retreated into the next coach.
In the little connecting passage which always
reminds me of the pull-out part of a camera I
nearly fell over a countryman in very loose
flannels, stretched out at full length. I asked
if he were train-sick. He gasped : " Leave me
alone ! This beauty overpowers me." I per-
ceived that he was an advanced person, and

' . ' ;>

.■> ■> ) .>

Neuchatel

was sure that he wore Jaeger underclothing.
I left him alone, and hope he was not over-
powered by the conductor, a man who, like Mr
Kipps, would have sternly warned him, " No
art ! "

I wonder how this comparatively new type
squares with the Continental conception of an
Englishman, which remains pretty much Caran
d' Ache's. The Jaegerish Briton is a creature
of nomadic habits, and has, moreover, a fancy for
straying off the beaten track, where the old
convention lingers longest. The tradition must
be rudely disturbed by these apparitions in
sandals, jibbehs, art serges, and open collars.
In certain quarters of Switzerland and Italy,
to which friends of mine have penetrated, I
expect to find John Bull represented by local
art as a rather weedy Oscar Wilde chewing a
young carrot.

Had my travelling companions broken their
journey at Neuchatel, as I did, their raptures
would soon have moderated. The town is very
yellow, and, as the French so expressively put
y it, morne. The streets are broad and tree-
lined, and very clean and quiet. There is, of
course, an efficient service of electric tramways ;
the station stands very high above the lake,
which is rather unfortunate, as it might other-
wise impart a little animation to the town.

Switzerland

There is a jardin Anglais provided for us
elegant islanders, and very neat, clean-swept
quays. There is nothing else to do in Neuchatel
but stroll up and down these, and inquire every
hour or two if there are any letters for you at the
post-office. There are one or two enormous
hotels where you are set down all by yourself
at a small table in the middle of the salle a
manger, and sit hoping against hope for the
appearance of some other traveller. If you
stayed long enough, I have no doubt another
would in due course appear ; but no one does
stay long enough.

I stopped at this melancholy place because a
German friend told me that he had had the time
of his life there. He was a very young and very
German German in those far-off times (away
back in the nineties), and was delighted to
strum a guitar beneath the windows of one of
the numerous girls' pensionnats or to go home
from the cafe with other desperadoes singing
part-songs and glees. I fear that he has since
forgotten these simple joys, as young Germans
do when they grow into prosperous London
merchants and go down to the sea in motor
cars and traffic in rubber and jungles.

The pensionnats, of which my now opulent
friend has such tender recollections, are very
numerous at Neuchatel. The inhabitants pride

Neuchatel

themselves on their excellent French, and English
girls are sent here in great numbers to acquire it.
It is for their special benefit, I suppose, that the
benevolent M. Suchard has established his
chocolate manufactory in the suburbs of the
town. These delightful Httle ladies collect pic-
ture postcards of Phyllis Dare, and all hope to
be like her some day. Their coming and going
must keep the youth of Neuchatel in a perpetual
agony of hopes and fears, and cause the native
young ladies (who are rather homely) ecstasies
of jealousy. I remember crossing the lake, once
upon a time, from Morat to Neuchatel with a
party of these schoolgirls, in charge, alas ! of
their excellent mistress. They were of various
nationaUties, but I noticed that two of them —
I am glad to say the prettiest — had little enamel
Union Jacks pinned to their blouses. In a coun-
try like Switzerland, where people from all parts
of the world meet at hotels or on steamers and
trains, it seems to me rather a good plan to
advertise one's nationality in this way — unless,
indeed, you feel your own countr5nTien to be
bores, as English people affect to do. These
schoolgirls, so far from being bores, beguiled
the three hours' journey by singing in chorus,
and very well their high, shrill, rather thin
voices sounded over the silvery waters of the
placid lake. The evening hour, the swish of

Switzerland

the water, the vision of the Alps, and these
famihar songs, produced in me those emotions
which are so deHcately rendered by Mr Chfton
Bingham. Home-sickness, I have observed, is
always acutest at what cyclists term lighting-
up time. I suppose this is a faint recrudescence
of the instinct of primitive man to seek shelter
when darkness approached. You don't feel
it when it is really night. A man is as little
likely to be home-sick at twelve midnight as at
twelve noon. English travellers subject to at-
tacks of this disagreeable sensation ward it off
by a hearty tea.

Having nothing much to do at present,
Neuchatel thinks and writes a good deal about
its past. Most New Castles are very old, and
this one is rather older than the New Forest.
There was a count at Neuchatel in 1290, when
he made an alliance with Fribourg. Later on
he allied himself with Berne. The first brunt
of Charles the Bold's ire fell on the county in
1476. Twenty miles north along the shore of
the lake is the little town of Grandson, with a
fine old castle, with the warm, red-peaked roofs
which once surmounted our English strongholds.
The Burgundians took this castle, and the Swiss
confederates, with whom marched a body of
Neuchatelois, encamped on the heights to the

north-east. The duke could not coax them

Neuchatel

down, so he marched out of the town and
feigned a retreat. But when the horns of Uri
and Lucerne were sounded close at hand, the
retreat became a real one, and presently a rout,
in which the Swiss captured enormous booty.
In fact this victory, says a Swiss historian, was
the richest in spoil ever gained by any people.

Charles, as we know, did not lose heart, but
collected another army, determined this time to
wipe these pestilent mountaineers out of exist-
ence. A mile south of Morat you may see the
marble obelisk which marks the place of Switzer-
land's crowning victory. In the little town
itself is another castle, wherein the confederates,
under Adrian von Bubenberg, resisted the in-
vaders for eleven days. On 22nd June 1476
the Swiss army advanced to the relief. The
advanced guard was forced back by the Bur-
gundians, who pursued them towards the forest,
and posted themselves behind quickset hedges.
The main body of the confederates came up,
and after a desperate struggle drove the enemy
from their shelter into the plain to the south-
ward. The rain poured down pitilessly, and not
less pitilessly the combat was continued. The
Burgundians gave way, leaving from eight to ten
thousand men dead on the field. All the bells
were rung joyously from Neuchatel to the abbey
of St Gall.

Switzerland

In 1504 the countship of Neuchatel passed by
inheritance to Louis d' Orleans, due de Longue-
ville. Eight years later, while France was at
war with the confederation, the territory was
occupied by the Bernese. The circumstance
was of great importance to the Neuchatelois,
for at the close of this temporary domination,
Farel, the religious reformer, was able to
introduce Protestant doctrines into the
country.

The canton is not to be congratulated upon its
apostle. Erasmus said that he had never met
a man more false, more violent, or more seditious
than Farel, who was nearly torn to pieces at
Montbeliard for having wrenched an image from
a priest and thrown it into the river. Another
reformer begged this zealot to be an evangelist
and not a tyrannical legislator. He seems
to have followed this advice for a time, and
resorted to " pious frauds " to beguile the Swiss
from their ancient faith. He spent his declining
years at Neuchatel, and astonished everyone
by taking a wife at the age of seventy. He was
very urgent, we read, with monks and nuns to
break their vows. His indulgence of the weak-
ness of human nature did not extend to heresy,
and he was an accomplice of Calvin in murdering
Serve tus. However, these indiscretions do not
appear to have shaken the faith of the Neu-

Neuchatel

chatelois in his doctrines, which are professed
(and we hope not practised) by 100,000 out of a
population of 126,000.

In 1530 the territory was recovered by the
Longuevilles. The overlordship had passed to
the Dutch branch of the house of Orange, by a
deed executed as far back as 1288. In the year
1532, Neuchatel was erected into a principality,
and in 1648 was recognised, like the rest of
Switzerland, as outside the Empire. Now in
1707 the house of Longueville came to an end
in the person of Marie de Nemours. There were
fifteen claimants of the vacant diadem ; but
the chancellor, MontmoUin, got the Council of
State to decide in favour of Frederick I., King
of Prussia, to whom William III. of England,
the last of the suzerain house of Orange, had
transferred his rights on his death five years
before. The Prussian king was chosen mainly
because the other claimants were all Catholics.

Neuchatel, though a principality under a
foreign king, continued to be an aUy of Berne
and Fribourg, and practically a member of the
Swiss confederation. In 1806 it was ceded by
Frederick William III. to Napoleon, who be-
stowed it upon Marshal Berthier. The new
prince never once set foot in his dominions,
but entrusted them to a governor named M. de
Lesperut. This gentleman, we are told by a

Switzerland

local historian, " passed his time in the salons
of the Neuchatelois nobility. The ladies of
that castle still recall the distinguished manner
in which he read Corneille and Racine ; but the
country was at the mercy of a few nobles, who
did not forget to remind the people that the
sovereign being the humble servant of a despot
could only be a despotic prince, and that they
being the servants of that servant, were to act
as their master and the master of that master."
The King of Prussia had forgotten all about
his remote appanage when in 1814 the nobility
aforesaid sent a deputy to congratulate him
at Bale and to request him to resume his
sovereignty. This he did, at the same time
acquiescing in the formal incorporation of Neu-
chatel within the confederation. A strange
idea for the King of Prussia to be a member of a
republican union ! As his Majesty had no time
or inclination to bother himself about the affairs
of Neuchatel, the government fell entirely into
the hands of the aristocracy, who continued the
policy of Berthier's day. In 1831 the people
began to growl. On the night of 13th Septem-
ber a force of about three hundred conspirators,
led by a young man named Bourguin, sur-
rounded the castle and occupied it without
resistance. The Council of State appealed for
help to Berne, and the federal authorities took

Neuchatel

possession of the stronghold. The electors were
consulted and pronounced for a continuance of
the monarchy.

During the next sixteen years the conflict
waged between republicans and royalists. Life
did not wear the tranquil aspect it does now in
Neuchatel. But in 1847 the canton committed
the mistake of refusing to help the central
Government against the Sonderbund. It pre-
ferred to remain neutral, as did Kentucky in
1861 and as Cape Colony wished to do in 1899.
It was fined five hundred thousand francs. Sure
now of the support of the federal authorities,
the republicans rose at Le Locle in February 1848,
and, under the leadership of A. M. Piaget, forced
the princely Government to surrender its powers.
The canton became a republic, like all its sisters
of the confederation.

His Prussian Majesty had his hands full at
home, and could do nothing just then to pre-
vent this subversion of his authority. In 1852,
however, he persuaded the other powers to
renew their recognition of him as Prince of
Neuchatel, and encouraged his partisans to
assert his rights. On 2nd September 1856 a
band of royalists, headed by the Count de
Pourtales, suddenly attacked and seized the
castle of Neuchatel, just as the republicans had
done in 183 1. They issued proclamations calling

Switzerland

on the people to rally round them and uphold
their legitimate prince. The republicans in the
mountain district immediately took up the
challenge and besieged the castle. They were
joined by the federal troops, who on 4th Septem-
ber drove the royalists from their stronghold
with a loss of twelve killed and a hundred
prisoners.

The leaders of the revolt were, it was an-
nounced, to be put on their trial for high treason.
The King of Prussia, who had not minded very
much the loss of his sovereignty, was not pre-
pared to stand the punishment of his faithful
adherents. He threatened the confederation
with war unless Pourtales and his followers
were set at liberty. The federal council refused
unless Prussia first formally renounced her
right to the canton. Napoleon III., whose
good offices Switzerland had invoked, recom-
mended the liberation of the royalists ; but the
republic stood firm. Prussia got leave from
the south German states to march her armies
through them to attack Switzerland, and the
Swiss mustered an army of 100,000 men under
the veteran Dufour. But Napoleon, on 8th
January 1858, persuaded the obstinate federals
to give way, and to content themselves with
exiling the royalist rebels. In return for this
concession, by a treaty signed at Paris on 20th

Neuchatel

April, Prussia renounced all rights to the canton.
Switzerland paid the king an indemnity of a
million francs, and granted an annuity to all
concerned in any way in the late troubles.

And so this anomaly of a king being a member
of a republican federation and of a principality
forming part of a republic came to an end.
It was well indeed for federation and canton
that it did so, as the Neuchatelois must have
gratefully reflected when war broke out in 1870
between France and their former suzerain. It is
not likely that the French would have respected
the neutrality of their enemy's principality, and
an invasion of the King of Prussia's Swiss
appanage would have meant war with the whole
of Switzerland. The danger they escaped was
brought still more vividly to the mind of the
people of the canton when Bourbaki's army,
broken and defeated, was hurled back against
their frontier at Pontarlier and Les Verrieres,
and demanded an asylum in Switzerland. Such
a demand could hardly have been granted by the
vassals of Prussia, and if it had been, assuredly
the Prussian army would have followed the
fugitives and attacked them on Swiss soil.
Count Pourtales showed such unpatriotic want
of foresight that he did not deserve that one of
the best streets in Neuchatel should be named
after him.

Switzerland

Of the horrors of that awful retreat across
the invisible and intangible barrier of the frontier
I have read no more vivid description than that
given by Paul and Victor Margueritte in their
novel, " Les Troncons du Glaive."

" The evening of the 31st, Clinchant reached
Les Verrieres, where he found the artillery and
baggage waggons collected amid an ever-
increasing swarm of scattered troops and de-
serters. From the French to the Swiss village,
negotiations passed between him and General
Hertzog, commanding the federal army, and a
convention was arranged. Disarmed at the
frontier, the men were to proceed to the places
that should be appointed, the officers keeping
their swords, guns and treasures to be con-
fided to the safe keeping of Switzerland. The
signatures having been exchanged, the troops
immediately began to cross the line. They
had been waiting since the preceding evening
in the snow.

" Through the darkness, the tragic defilade
began. B}^ the narrow defile behind Pon-
tarlier, by the roads of Les Verrieres and Les
Fourgs, by the narrowest fissures in the moun-
tains, the compact stream poured, flowed, and
trickled. What remained of the 15th, 20th,
and 24th corps, a confused mob of infantry,
horsemen, gunners, and waggons like moving

Neuchatel

barricades, was heaved forward in a black
torrent, dense and continuous. But, covering
the retreat, in the defile of La Cluse, between
the fort at Joux and the battery in the snow
at Larmont, the roar of the cannon, the furious
rattle of musketry was heard once again. The
Prussian advance - guard, after crossing Pon-
tarher, took four hundred waggons loaded with
provisions, and rose up before the defiles. Ming-
ling with the convoy, they attacked Pallu de
la Barriere's division, the general reserve, under
cover of which the i8th corps, forming the
rear-guard, was then retreating. Two of its
regiments made a half-circle, and hastened to
join the reserve, the only troops which, out of
the hundred thousand men who set out from
Bourges and Lyons, kept up heart.

" These at least were heroes. For seven hours
they tramped through blood and snow, striding
over corpses, step by step to make their way.
Officers and men vied with each other. Pallu's
infantry asked him : ' Are you satisfied,
General ? ' Lieutenant - Colonel Achilli fell
bravely. To a flag of truce endeavouring to
persuade him that he had no choice but to yield,
General Robert answered : ' There is still death
remaining.' Until night-fall, thundering from
Joux and crackling from La Cluse, the cannon
and the musketry covered the parting of the
c 33

Switzerland

roads, and the retreat of the artillery, proclaiming
that in this disaster honour was not altogether
shipwrecked !

" Nearly ninety thousand men had already
been thrown on to Swiss soil. The procession
had lasted two days. From one twilight to the
other, all night long, and again on the morrow,
across the slopes white with snow, the dark
stream flowed down, inexhaustibly. With a
slow relentless impulse, the waves starting at
the rear pushed on unceasingly, driving the
others before them. Between hedges of the
federal troops, motionless, leaning on their
arms, the tide flowed ever onwards. For the
last to enter, the first must march for leagues and
hours. Thrown, as they passed, in two enormous,
piles on each side of the road, were heaped
up rifles, ammunition, sabres, revolvers, and
pouches. Lances, thrust into the ground,
bristled Hke a leafless forest. Nothing was
heard along the whole length of the moving
line, but a complaining murmur raised by
thousands of dry coughs. Nearly all werer
limping, with bleeding and swollen feet ; be-
neath the unkempt hair, shaggy faces showed!
eyes that gleamed like madmen's. Theyl
shivered in rags that swarmed with vermin.l
At intervals there passed by waggons and'
horses ; with the flesh worn off their bones,

Neuchatel

many having been saddled for weeks — living
ulcers with manes and tails eaten away; so
hungry were they that they gnawed the wood
at the back of the waggons.

" At this sight the inhabitants, assembled by
hundreds, their hands laden with gifts, began
to weep. Hastening from the towns, villages
and solitary huts, they brought clothing, bread,
money, drink and meat. The very poorest
gave.

I " Into great wooden troughs overflowing with
warm milk, bowls held at arm's length were
plunged in turn without ceasing, filled, and ^
emptied at a draught. Sometimes by the roadside
fell the dying, senseless, mute ; they were raised
up kindly. Barns and stables soon were full,
and at a distance in the plain, the schools and
churches. A boundless charity held out its
arms, touched to compassion by this flood of
horrors, such as man never remembered to have
seen."

The horses so hungry that they gnawed the
backs of the waggons ! Nothing is so horrible
in horrible war as the sufferings of the animals
who are its absolutely involuntary, innocent
victims. I confess the wrongs inflicted on horses
and cattle during our South African campaign
affected me more poignantly than the hard-
ships endured by the men. And by a heart-

Switzerland

less paradox the humanities of war, extended
under the Red Cross to the most guilty of human
combatants, are denied to these helpless ir-
responsible non-combatants. Perhaps such a
scene as the French novelists have described
might have done good to our journalists who
sneer at dreams of peace among the nations
and exert themselves to foment national
jealousies. Most of these gentry have never
seen, and don't intend to see, a shot fired in
anger, it is to be noted.

While staying at Neuchatel I walked out to a
little place on the lake called Auvernier, where
I had an excellent tea at an inn called the |
" Poisson." This was the reward but not the ob-
ject of my excursion, which had been to inspect '
the far-famed lake-dwellings of Auvernier. For
if the fisherman on the Lake of Neuchatel does
not see " the round towers of other days in the
wave beneath him shining," he may bump his
keel at low water on the piles which supported
the villages of an even remoter generation.
The lake, in times beyond the ken of history,
seems to have been studded with these strange
abodes of primitive man. No less than fifty
" villages " have been counted.

It was probably not on the score of health
that the lake-dweller chose to fix his habitation
on the waters ; nor was it that craving for !

Neuchatel

luxury, against which the genial Horace
thundered and which moved the Roman pluto-
crat to build his villa out among the lapping
waves until even " the fishes felt the ocean
shrink." Protection against a neighbouring
tribe was all that was craved of the old stone-
man, an ark among the bulrushes where he might
be safe from his hereditary foe. And so he set
to work laboriously to hew down trees, to
sharpen their trunks and drive them as stakes
into the mud at the bottom of the lake, but-
tressing them with loose heaps of stones. On
these he laid horizontal beams of wood and
twisted stems, and lo ! a spacious platform
above the water some few hundred feet from
land, from which the Neolith might with im-
punity hurl insults at his less ingenious neigh-
bour on the shore. Then came the speculative
builder, and erected what the skin-clad
auctioneer no doubt described as " highly desir-
able modern residences." Their walls were
wattle-work bound together with clay. Reeds
or rushes from the lake, the bark of trees, and
straw (probably pilfered from a hostile clan)
went to the making of the roof. The floor was
clay, with flat stone slabs let in to form the
hearth. Of doors and windows we have no
details ; the latter probably were lacking.
The dwellings varied considerably in size, reach-

Switzerland

ing at times the palatial proportions of twenty-
seven by twenty-two feet.

The lake man did not love to dwell alone.
Each platform seems to have been thickly
crowded with huts, with only about three feet
of space between. Here he lived with his wives
and his sons and his daughters, his uncles and
his cousins, his oxen and his asses, in emulation
of Noah. Probably, stabled in the lake below
him he kept his pet hippopotamus, or behemoth,
or whatever were the prehistoric equivalents of
the Persian cat and the Pekinese.

The watery stronghold has always been dear
to the heart of the Celtic peoples. In Ireland it
persisted well into the sixteenth century, and in
the wilder Scottish Highlands are scattered evi-
dences that it was not despised by the chieftains
of Ossian and Fingal. These lacustrine Venices
in times of peace were often connected with the
strand by a long and narrow gangway, built
so that it might easily be destroyed when the
war-note sounded over the hills. Then when
there were things a-doing on the mainland the -
prehistoric warriors, at dead of night, would i
shoot silently over the waters in long canoes i
of bark, deftly steering among the shadows oni
the lake to elude a watchful eye. One of these
canoes has been found deeply embedded in the -
mud at the bottom of Lake Neuchatel. A curious i

Neuchatel

structure it is, forty feet in length by only
four in breadth, hollowed out of a tree- trunk.
The lake-dweller must have had the skill of
an Oxford blue to sail so frail a craft in safety.

The settlements at Auvemier tell of two
remote societies. One dates back to the age
of stone, the other to the days when men first
learned the art of Tubal-Cain and fashioned
their implements of bronze. This is the more in-
teresting and the richest in relics. Only twelve
feet below the surface of the lake it lay for
thousands of years, unsuspected of the fishermen,
guarding the secrets of " old forgotten far-off
things, and battles long ago." To the archae-
ologist it speaks of a race of beings, intelligent,
highly socialised, not lacking in culture. They
practised agriculture, and knew several varieties
of wheat and barley. They spun linen, flax and
wool, which supplemented the skins of beasts
as clothing. Their food and houses seem to
have been superior to those of more historic
times. The pottery that has been recovered
is fine in texture, and of an elegant shape,
ornamented with waving lines that recall the
Greek.

As might be expected, most of the relics
dredged up from the submerged villages are
implements of warfare. There are spear-heads
in stone and bronze, axes, sickles, knives and

Switzerland

hammers that have been lodged in the museum
at the little town of Boudry — Marat's birth-
place— on the road from Neuchatel to Lausanne ;
and most important of all from the archaeologist's
point of view are six bronze swords, all richly
chased, which prove their masters to have
achieved some distinction in the art of warfare.

It is curious that of all the hundreds of the
lake-villages of Switzerland not one has yielded
what can be regarded as a religious relic. There
has been found nothing approaching an idol or
an image. Can it be possible that the primitive
men of the Stone and Bronze ages were un-
trammelled by the superstitions that have
weighed down primitive peoples from the dawn
of history to the present day ?

But in other respects at any rate they were

strangely like their far-off descendants. They

had their little vanities. Rings and twisted

necklaces have come to light, and bracelets

enough to delight our Saxon forefathers. Beads

of stone and amber, and very rarely of silver,

adorned the daughters of the race. But most

common article of all are — hairpins ! Unlike

the modern article, these are elaborate affairs

of bronze, their heads ornamented with plates

and bands of gold. In length they sometimes

measure sixteen inches, and at a crisis I can

imagine their fair owners using them as a

Neuchatel

formidable weapon to revenge some insult offered
by their lovers. I like to think of these pre-
historic women, with vigorous bodies and sun-
tanned flesh, fastening these barbaric bodkins in
their long hair with conscious coquetry; and
I like to think of the dusky evenings in old
Helvetia, when the lake-dwelling warrior made
his primeval courtship while the water rippled
through the rushes, and the winds ruffled the
violet shadows on the lake. And over all the
stars shone on the eternal snows and on the
eternal passions of humanity.

THE PAYS DE VAUD

In the early dawn of my childhood I heard a
voice, unrecognisable now, singing of the
" beautiful Pays de Vaud." I thought it would
be pleasant to go to that country, where, I
gathered. Nature, a great green kindly lady,
sat with an open picture-book on her lap, ready
to show it to all comers. Nearly twenty years
passed before my desire was fulfilled, and
though the Pays de Vaud is indeed beautiful,
it fell very far short of the country of my
childish imagining. But I can say as much,
unfortunately, of other and wider realms than
the country of Agassiz.

I think the glamour in this instance must have
worn thin very early, for I certainly felt no
thrill of hope or exultation as I rode one autumn
morning for the first time across the rivulet
which divides the canton of Neuchatel from the
canton Vaud, and struck southwards past the
peaked towers of historic Grandson, along the
shore of the placid lake. Montreux was my
destination, and I knew that a stiff climb lay
between me and Lausanne. Yet I spared an
hour to Yverdon, where the statue of Pestalozzi
looks towards the old Burgundian chateau in

1 » 1 J > J >

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I'l ?'. •,

The Pays de Vaud

which he carried out his system of education.
The Httle town wore a martial rather than a
scholastic air just then. Its three streets re-
echoed to the tramp of the soldier-citizens,
while guns limbered up rumbled past as though
an enemy's camp fires lit the Jura. The state
of the country roads had already reminded me
that a state of mimic war prevailed around
Yverdon, and that the confederation was ex-
ercising her sons in arms. They looked smart,
alert and formidable, these Helvetic infantrymen,
in whose caps it seems strange to see the cross
the soldier of other lands has learnt to associate
with peace and mercy. Leaving the din and
circumstance of glorious war behind, I pushed
on past the quiet little spa and casino of Yverdon,
well suited by its leafy tranquillity for nervous
folk, and saw rising before me the black and
cloudy uplands of the Pays de Vaud. I had
chanced upon a blank page in Nature's picture-
book.

As I toiled up those endless winding ascents
I had time to think over the history of the land,
and, finding I knew so little about it, to promise
myself further instruction. It has been written
in considerable detail by the patriotic men of
learning in whom this soil seems so prolific. In
these erudite tomes you may read how the
country fell upon the death of the last Duke of
Zahringen to Count Peter of Savoy, " the little

Switzerland

Charlemagne," and how he and his successors
endeared themselves to the Vaudois by their
respect for justice and liberty. The happy
land was not even taxed, but consented of its
own accord from time to time to supply funds
with which to carry on the government.
Moudon was the seat of the Count's bailiff ;
Lausanne remained the exclusive domain of its
bishop.

In an evil hour for the Vaudois, the Count
and many of the nobles espoused the cause of
Charles the Bold. Following on their victory
at Grandson, the Switzers overran the country
and left it in a state of anarchy. The nobility,
who had long been jealous of the towns, aspired
to virtual independence. Some of the towns
remained loyal to Savoy, others thought that
in their submission to Berne lay their only
safeguard against the barons. The uncertainty
of their political destiny notwithstanding, the
people laughed and possibly grew fat. Boni-
vard, writing at the beginning of the sixteenth
century, reports : " 1 lived at a certain place in
this country while the pest was ravaging it . . .
yet all the while you might have seen the girls
dancing to the sound of the virioUs and singing
songs as if it were shrove-tide." The Vaudois
were, in fact, on the eve of a long Lent. In 1522,
in the midst of this political and social anarchy,
the doctrines of Luther were introduced into

The Pays de Vaud

the country by an ex-monk named Lambert.
He met with a hostile reception, as also did
Farel, who opened a conventicle at Aigle. The
magistrates and clergy ordered the expulsion
of these innovators. The Bernese were not
slow to avail themselves of this new pretext for
interference in the affairs of their derelict
neighbours. They sent Rodolphe Nagili, one
of their most energetic captains, to Aigle with
orders to protect Farel and force the reformed
religion upon the inhabitants. This was not,
however, to be done all at once. Farel could
only preach with the sword of Berne flashing
behind him, and an image-desecrating expedition
met with a stout resistance.

Meanwhile the Duke of Savoy had pledged
Vaud to the Bernese as a guarantee that he
would not molest Geneva. In 1535 that city
embraced the Protestant creed. This was more
than her suzerain could stand, and he at once
attacked her. The patricians of Berne were not
the men to miss such a chance. They marched
an army into the Pays de Vaud to claim fulfil-
ment of the pledge, and after trifling resistance
occupied the territory as far as the Lake of
Leman. Lausanne had thrown off the yoke
of her bishop and was also crushed in the tight
embrace of the bear from the Aar.

The Vaudois had soon reason to regret the
change of rulers. The old faith was remorsely

Switzerland

extirpated, and the property of the Church was
seized by the new Government. Yet, strange
to say, as in England, the people have continued
attached to the religion which was thus forced
upon them by their masters for purely political
objects. The Bernese were at once Pope and
Caesar. They expelled the Catholic clergy and
excluded the natives of the country from all
share in the government. Taxes were levied
without the consent of the states, which ceased
to be summoned. All authority was vested in
the bailiff, who was chosen from among the
patricians of Berne for a term of six years,
during which he lived like a prince at the sole
expense of the subject people. Nor was this
a merely passive tyranny. The Bernese had a
perfect craze for legislation and harassed the
unfortunate province by an ever-increasing
multitude of laws and ordinances. Their Ex-
cellencies, as they styled themselves, were
clever enough, moreover, to foment dissensions
between the gentry and the common people,
and, in short, pursued the policy of the worst
Italian oligarchies. Under their harsh adminis-
tration, however, education made rapid strides,
and public security was rigorously maintained.
For nearly two hundred years the patient
Vaudois bore this heavy yoke without a murmur.
They paid the taxes and fought in the armies
of their oppressors. Having taken an honour-

The Pays de Vaud

able share in the victory of Bremgarten, they
made so bold as to ask their rulers to convoke
the estates of Moudon to consider the grievances
of the country. Their Excellencies rejected the
proposal with contempt. At last, in 1723,
Major Davel, a Vaudois officer who had dis-
tinguished himself in the service of Berne, de-
termined to raise his country to the rank of a
canton. He was a hare-brained visionary and
dreamer, wholly unsuited to head such an
enterprise. Without taking anyone into his
confidence he marched his battalion into Lau-
sanne, and, having surrounded the town hall,
submitted his demands for the convocation of
the estates and the recognition of the liberties
of Vaud to the Bernese governors. These
crafty officials affected sympathy with the
movement, and De Crousaz, one of their number,
persuaded the Major to pass the night in his
house while the proposals were duly considered.
Next morning, on his way to the town hall,
Davel was to his astonishment arrested by the
commander of a force the magistrates had in-
troduced into the town overnight. No mercy
was shown him by the ruthless and grasping
oligarchy. He was imprisoned at the Porte
Saint Maire, and put to " the question," which
means that he was tortured by the crushing of
his wrists and ankles. Finally he was beheaded
at Vidy, outside Lausanne, on 24th April 1723,

Switzerland

predicting that his Hfe would be found not to
have been sacrificed in vain.

His prophecy was fulfilled. The roar of the
French Revolution began to echo among the
hills of Vaud, and the people roused themselves
from their ignoble apathy. Their celebrated
countryman, Laharpe, who had been the tutor
of the Tsar Alexander, had the ear of the
Directory and moved them on behalf of his
little Fatherland. The first risings were sup-
pressed with bloodshed by the Bernese, who
maintained their arrogant bearing to the last.
But in 1797 they received a stern warning from
Paris that they would be held responsible
individually for any injury done to the persons
or property of the Vaudois. In January the
French troops crossed the frontier, and on the
24th the colours of the new Lemanic Republic
were hoisted over the town hall of Lausanne.
The Government of Berne was at an end, and
Vaud was for the first time in history a nation.

Her identity was presently lost in the Helvetic
Republic — one and indivisible — and again
emerged as one of the sovereign cantons of the
reformed confederation established under the
auspices of Napoleon. There were in Vaud, as
in all countries, many people who sighed for their
accustomed chains, but on the whole the new
canton showed more gratitude than the other

Swiss states for the enormous benefits France

J * > • » J •

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».' : > ? '

>
>

i c f «,r • t. f

The Pays de Vaud

had conferred on the country. When darkness
overspread the earth again after Waterloo, there
was a rumour that the power of Berne was to
be restored. But it was too late. Where the
flag of the Revolution had once waved, the old
rotten order of things could never recover its
full strength again. The English reinstated
Ferdinand VII. in Spain and expelled the
French, but the seed of liberty took root in the
peninsula all the same. Similarly Vaud survived
the downfall of her liberator. She remains a
self-governing state in a republican confedera-
tion ; and to emphasise her love of liberty she
puts that word first in her device — Liherte, Patrie.
Not a very glorious history ! illumined only
by that isolated episode of Davel's martyrdom.
One wishes these people had not so meekly
accepted the rule and religion of the stranger,
though larger and more powerful communities
have made no shame of doing so. Yet, thanks
to some mysterious federal rights possessed by
the canton of Fribourg in these parts, Romanism
still lingers at the dull little town of Echallens
on the summit of the watershed, which I reached
after a wearisome climb from Yverdon. Such
is the zeal of the Vaudois for the creed forced
upon them by alien tyrants that in this poor
little oasis of the old faith I found an evangelical
missionary establishment. Like most enter-
prises of the kind, its first appeal was to the

D 49

Switzerland

corporal needs of man : attached to the Christian
Young Men's Institute is a restaurant where I
made a hasty meal. It was meagre enough,
consisting of eggs fried in butter as bitter and
salt as Calvin's creed ; and I consoled myself
by reflecting that such fare was likely to pre-
judice all who partook of it, once for aU, against
this most unlovely and unethical system of faith
and morals.

A mile or two beyond this dismal town I saw
the Lake of Geneva spread out below me — a
vast, profoundly blue expanse, dotted with white
sails and pearl-grey smudges of smoke ; to right
and left stretched the green shores, flecked by
white-walled towns ; straight before me, rising
from invisible bases, Mont Blanc lifted its dome
above the clouds — the bulwark, as it seemed,
of a far, aerial kingdom. The sun was shifting
towards Geneva. Its rays were pale gold and
were caught over the Alps of Savoy by a fleet
of curling clouds sailing to the north. As I
gazed a great bird rose up, as it seemed, from the
dust before my wheel, dazed me for an instant
with a whirr and ruffling of great wings, and
then with these wide outstretched speeded across
the lake into France.

It was good to let my noiseless wheel rush
down that long, winding slope into Lausanne,
ever quickening its pace and forcing the moun-
tain air into my face and lungs. The chill of the

The Pays de Vaud

bleak uplands of Echallens was gone, and an
immense exhilaration possessed me. In those
moments I was intensely conscious of my youth
and of the present. Most happiness is retro-
spective or prospective. The joy of the senses
belongs to the moment.

Such thrills are more often experienced on
the higher Alps far above the snow-line than
approaching sedate scholastic Lausanne. The
capital of the canton Vaud is a city of the Bath
and Cheltenham type — given up to leisure,
lettered ease, and the amenities of artificial life.
Here nature is contemplated, admired and shut
out. It is a town suited to scholars and old
maids. It stands a little way back from the lake
as if afraid to wet its feet. One understands
why such a place bore so long the oppressive
yoke of Berne — tragedy, blood, strife, would be
out of harmony with its essential atmosphere.
In spite of its changes of masters, Lausanne
has been unusually fortunate in avoiding these
disagreeable things. When the Bernese invaded
the country the bishop fled without testing the
powers of resistance of his strong castle which
still looms over the city. The religion of Lau-
sanne was then decided, not by the appeal to
arms usual in such cases, but by a controversy
in the cathedral between Calvin and the Catholic
theologians. If the black Pope of Geneva really
won in this battle of words, his opponents must

Switzerland

have been phenomenally poor dialecticians !
However, it is admitted that when the people
had heard enough they hastened to ransack the
church while their masters confiscated the
bishop's property. Even Davel's pronuncia-
miento failed to stain the streets with blood.
Meanwhile the townsfolk were subjected to
an ecclesiastical tyranny from. which the Holy
Office would have refrained. It was the golden
age of Stiggins, You were fined or imprisoned
if you didn't go to church ; dancing, card-
playing, snuff-taking and tobacco-smoking were
criminal offences ; the men's wigs were not
allowed to exceed a certain size ; the women of
the bourgeoisie were forbidden to wear more
than one petticoat at a time — though I should
imagine that violations of this last-mentioned
law could not very easily have been detected.
It was always Good Friday in Lausanne ; but
the Calvinistic churches have always been
respecters of persons and were careful to explain
that these laws did not apply to the gentry and
the magistrates.

The gentry were not easily reached by the
spiritual shepherds of Lausanne. Having no
part in the government of their own country,
they went abroad when young and often dis-
tinguished themselves as soldiers, scholars and
statesmen in the service of foreign powers. I
have named Laharpe. M. Vulliet, the historian

The Pays de Vaud

of the canton, mentions, among other illustrious
natives. Generals Haldimand and Ribeaupierre,
of the British and Russian services respectively,
and several others who seem to have made a
stir in the literary circles of their day. These
exiles returned sooner or later to the city by the
lake, and tempered the puritanical atmosphere
with the graces if not the gallantries of the
courts they had left. The academies of Geneva
and Lausanne furnished pastors and martyrs
to the Huguenot communities in the south of
France, but at home the spirit of Calvin was
modified by the charm of " madrigals, im-
promptus and stanzas to Chloe. ... It was a
joyous but also a serious society."

These cultured townsfolk attracted the friends
they had made amid other scenes, and by the
middle of the eighteenth century, Lausanne, like
Geneva, had become a favourite resort of the
polite world. Perhaps the town's best claim
to the affectionate remembrance of mankind is
that here Gibbon completed his stupendous
work. Voltaire liked the place, Madame de
Stael was bored there. Much has been written,
and I shall say no more, of the literary as-
sociations of the Vaudois capital. " All the
amenities of society and sound philosophy,"
wrote the great historian, " have found their
way into the part of Switzerland in which the
cHmate is most agreeable and wealth abounds.

Switzerland

The people here have succeeded in grafting the
pohteness of Athens upon the simpHcity of
Sparta."

One wishes they had hkewise grafted the
patriotism of Thrasybulus on the valour of
Leonidas. But Lausanne had found out that
she pleased the elegant foreigner, and she has
dreaded ever since everything that might drive
him away. You must not look for heroes at
health resorts, nor expect to hear a new Mar-
seillaise at Margate. Lausanne still profits
handsomely by foreign gold. Her schools swarm
with English boys and girls, and there is a large
resident English colony. In some parts of the
town you might fancy yourself in Bath or
Cheltenham. Elderly gentlemen of the Anglo-
Indian type pass you discussing the iniquities
of the Liberal Government and predicting that
their country is going to the dogs — which is
perhaps the reason why they elect to spend their
pensions and educate their children in a republi-
can country.

There appear to be no manufactures or
serious industries in the pleasant Vaudois
capital, but it flourishes exceedingly for all
that. The outskirts resound with the hammer-
ing of builders and carpenters ; there is con-
siderable show of modest opulence. In native
society, the academic and legal elements pre-
dominate, for this is the seat not only of a

The Pays de Vaud

university but of the supreme federal tribunal.
This was established at Lausanne as a solatium
for all the other federal institutions having been
fixed in German-speaking cantons. Now the
Bernese have to come up for judgment among
the people they looked down upon as slaves.

Tourists and globe-trotters do not stay long
in Lausanne, and scarcely give more than a
glance at its historic monuments. The castle
of St Maire, where the bishops reigned and re-
velled, and Davel spent his last night, is now
sadly modernised and houses the cantonal
administration. The cathedral was built by
Catholic hands and still looks fair and stately
outside ; since the Calvinist conquest the in-
terior has been sv/ept and garnished, and seems
to have been taken possession of by spirits
other than those of religion.

Finding yourself on the shore of the lake, you
may be tempted to cross over into Savoy ;
or, if you have not had enough of the odour of
puritanism, may follow the shore to Geneva past
dull Merges and picturesque Nyon. It is worth
while to turn aside for a glance at Vufflens, the
grandest castle on Swiss soil. " This magnificent
feudal manor," exclaims a German traveller,
" symbolises the power of those proud barons,
the vassals of the kings of Burgundy and the
dukes of Savoy, who were all but the equals of
their suzerain. All the poetry of the middle

Switzerland

age seems to reside in the mighty towers of this
imposing monument. The image of the rude
agitated Ufe which once filled this lonely neigh-
bourhood with noise and strife impresses on us
more forcibly the charm of the soft and peaceful
existence which is led to-day at the foot of these
towers."

The castle is formed by two buildings : the
keep or donjon, fifty-four metres in height, and
a square palace or residential block adjacent,
flanked at each angle with a round tower.
Keep and towers blossom out at their summits
into the heavy machicolated galleries so common
in Italy and carry high-pitched and pinnacled
roofs. Certain parts of the stronghold may
date from the twelfth century, but the keep
as a building is not older than the first decade
of the fifteenth century, and was restored in
i860. The interior of the castle presents a
curious combination of styles, the work of
successive generations. The vaulting of the
baronial hall reminds one of St Mark's, Venice.
It need not be said that the view from the
platform of the keep embraces a magnificent
expanse of mountain and lake.

In the opposite direction, from Lausanne you
may proceed always beside the lake towards
Vevey and Montreux. With every stride you
take new mountains come into view, new
combinations of white peaks and ragged rocks

• > ' , ', i ' ;

The Pays de Vaud

rival each other in sublimity, till at last the
glorious sun-kissed Dent du Midi closes the
prospect. Vevey itself is a little Lausanne,
thriving, pleasant, and a favourite resort of
foreign gentlefolk. Its name is gratefully re-
membered in the world's nurseries. Vevey is
also the emporium of a drink not made for
babes or brown cats. It is the capital of the
wine district, and Swiss wine, it should be said,
is by no means to be despised. The natives like
it so well that drunkenness is their besetting
weakness. Vevey has always been devoted to
the cult of Bacchus and has found gold at the
bottom of the cup. A fraternity of vine-
dressers seems to have existed here from the
earliest times, but its archives were unhappily
burnt in 1688. To this " abbey of the vine-
growers " is due the institution of the celebrated
Fete des Vignerons, which has for hundreds of
years been held in the market-place at Vevey
at various and ever-lengthening intervals. This
is almost the greatest festival in Switzerland
and attracts an immense concourse. In 1833
more than 25,000 visitors flocked into the town;
in 1889 no fewer than 170,000 strangers were
present. Special music and dances are prepared
for the pageant, in which the actors are without
exception natives, though they usually number
over a thousand.

" The fete des vignerons," writes Armand

Switzerland

Vautier, " is the great national, patriotic, and
popular feast, the festival of agriculture, truly
born of the soil on which it is celebrated. Its
poetry is thoroughly impregnated with the odour
of the spot, in spite of its repeated incursions
into the domain of mythology. In the beginning
it was a simple parade of the confraternity of
vine-growers, dedicated to St Urban, which
went through the streets of Veve}^ celebrating
the culture of the vine. Later on, the other
agricultural industries became entitled to a
place : Ceres, then Pales, were joined with
Bacchus. The highlands, with their goat-herds
and flocks, were next brought in and became the
most popular element of the festival. Subse-
quent to 1 79 1, four troops were organised,
corresponding to the four seasons. Groups were
added to groups, the number of characters
became imposing. Thanks to a very serious
preparation, they have proved that the Vaudois
are capable of becoming, at a given moment,
an artistic people. The varied tableaux which
succeed each other in this national epopea — the
corteges of gods with their priests, shepherds,
harvesters, goat-herds, fauns, and bacchantes,
dances intervening, mediaeval Switzers bringing
up the rear — have usually a somewhat incoherent
effect. It is an odd mixture of pagan mythology
and Christian elements, of realism and con-
vention. And yet these tableaux harmonise

The Pays de Vaud

under the gaze of the onlooker ; as in a Vaudois
landscape, a Roman monument, a feudal
tower and modem city are embraced in the same
frame without producing any sense of incon-
gruity."

Beyond Vevey, the lake shore is embanked
and begins to merit the name of the Swiss
Riviera. The mountains come closer and closer
to the water, the clean, white road is bordered
by a long succession of villas with gardens and
balconies looking on the lake. Presently the
houses assume a more palatial aspect, grandiose
hotels line the route, and perch on the flanks
of the overhanging mountains. We have
reached that long, irregular band of villages —
Vemex, Veytaux, Clarens, Territet, Montreux,
Chillon — which goes by the last name but one.
Montreux is pre-eminently the resort of French
Switzerland, and one of the oldest. Clarens
is indissolubly associated with Rousseau, who
wandered here dreaming of Heloise ; Chillon
has been immortalised by Byron. For well
over a century these associated villages have
attracted foreigners in search of blue sky, clear
waters, and noble prospects. Montreux claims
to be a resort all the year round, but it is dull
and stuffy at the height of summer. The
hotels swarm then, as at all times, with Russian
grand dukes, but they contribute little to the
entertainment of visitors. There is a casino,

Switzerland

of course, where you may listen to improving
music, and any number of tea-shops where you
get excellent pastry and thin tea. In the
calm days of August and September there is
little else to do but to sit on the terrace of your
hotel and watch the play of the light on the
Dent du Midi. The mountain encroaches so
closely on the lake that walks are only possible
along the shore, and then by a road crowded
with houses and narrowed by a tramway track.
Behind you, there are any number of climbs and
scrambles up the mountains to Glion, Caux,
Les Avant, and the other winter resorts above
Montreux.

In summer, in fact, there is little to draw
strangers here except the famous castle of
Chillon jutting out into the blue water on the
road to Villeneuve. The venerable pile is in
excellent repair and is visited by swarms of
tourists, who are kept severely in order by an
elderly gendarme — one of the few seen in the
canton. Most people know something of the
history of the castle ; but the following notes
prepared at the time of my first visit may re-
fresh the traveller's memory.

) > 1 • *

- • .' •'.

c
o

CHILLON

Washed on all sides but one by the waters of
the lake, the castle of Chillon seems to carry the
natural fortifications of the mountains in one
unbroken sweep down to the very margin of
the waters, so skilful — or fortunate — was its
thirteenth - century architect. The present
fortress is invested for most English visitors
with a romantic glamour through the genius of
Lord Byron. But long before the Gothic arches
were moulded the advantages of the site were
recognised by the lords of the surrounding
country. For what could be handier than the
lake whose waters lapped the castle's very
foundations when one had enemies to dispose
of ? Relics of the Bronze Age have been found
on its rocky platforms. There are undoubted
traces of a Roman edifice, and as early as the
ninth century the records speak of a massive
and gloomy tower, built in what was then a
savage spot where nothing was visible but
" the sky, the Alps and the Lake of Leman."
Even this prospect was all too often shut out
from the wretched inmates by the thick walls
of the Carlovingian stronghold.
The history of Chillon, indeed, is the history

Switzerland

of its dungeons. The first illustrious prisoner
whose name the chronicles have preserved was
the Count Wala, Abbot of Corbie, the trusted
favourite of Charlemagne. Here in 830 he
was shut up by Louis the Debonnair, for Louis'
sons had been in revolt against their father and
Wala was known to be the friend and counsellor
of Lothair, though the unfortunate man's
counsels were never followed. But his captivity
was neither very long nor very irksome. When
Lothair took the field a second time against
his father, Wala was hurried away to another
prison, farther removed from the reach of the
rebel. A few years later the cell of the monk
was substituted for that of the captive, and in
the monastery of Bobbio, in Lombardy, Wala
passed out of a turbulent world.

In 1254 the present castle was begun by Peter
of Savoy, " the little Charlemagne," who made
it his favourite residence. Says an old song :

" Le vaillant comte PieiTe
Possedait maint vallon,
Et pour son nid de pierre,
Le manoir de Chillon ;
Nid plante dans les ondes
Dont les lames profondes
Bercent le vieux chateau

Sur I'eau,
Sur le bord de I'eau
Bercent le vieux chateau
Sur I'eau."
62

Chillon

But amid the ups and downs of war it happened
that Peter himself was once confined here as
prisoner with eighty of his knights and barons.
After this the princes of Savoy lost their love
for the watery fortress and Chillon came to be
.used only as a State prison.

In the fourteenth century a pestilence, a kind
I of Black Death, swept through the neighbouring
'country of Vieux-Chablais. The cry went up
amongst the Vaudois that the wells were poisoned.
iln the Middle Ages there was but one cause
recognised for every pestilence, famine or sudden
death that devastated the land — the Jews.
And so the dungeons of Chillon were filled to
overflowing with these unfortunates. Many
were burned alive by order of the judges of
Savoy. But the people accused their magis-
trates of undue indulgence to the criminals.
They broke into the castle, and seizing on all
the prisoners, without regard to age or sex or
any form of law, hurried them pell-mell to the
flames. The instigators of this horrible outrage
were punished with rewards and honours.

But it was through the captivity of Frangois
Bonivard that Chillon became a household
word in England. Byron, knowing, as he after-
wards confessed, nothing about his life, seized
on the name of Bonivard as a peg on which to
hang a panegyric to liberty. " The Prisoner
of Chillon " and the fine sonnet that precedes

Switzerland

it are the result. For there was a strange super-
stition abroad among the EngUsh romantic
poets of the early nineteenth century, that
Switzerland, at that time one of the oppression
centres of Europe, was the very home of freedom.
Byron has left us a striking picture of a
suffering, sensitive, introspective character, not
guiltless of his own rather theatrical personality,
touched with the mal du siecle. His prisoner, a
heroic martyr to Protestant convictions, becomes
warped in body and mind :

" My hair is grey, but not with years

My hmbs are bowed though not with toil
But rusted with a vile repose."

He is crushed in spirit by the death of his two
brothers, whose captivity was but a figment of
the poet's imagination, designed to increase the
horror. The maddening monotony of his life
almost overbalances a delicate brain, until, a
living corpse, he again emerges into the world.

" It might be months, or years or days —

I kept no count, I took no note —
I had no hope my eyes to raise,

And clear them of their dreary mote ;
At last men came to set me free ;

I asked not why, and recked not where ;
It was at length the same to me
Fettered or fetterless to be,

I learned to love despair."
64

Chill

With these tragic hnes beating in his head the
traveller gazes in silent horror at the thick iron
rings let into the pillars of the dungeon, to which
Bonivard was chained. But the account of the
prisoner's sufferings given by history is less
harrowing than that evolved by Byron.

Frangois indeed bore a brave part in the fight
against Savoy, and acquitted himself well to-
wards his adopted town, Geneva. But he was
no high-souled martyr burning with devotion
to religious liberty. He was a jolly man of the
world, this Frangois, hospitable, a great viveur,
well seasoned with Rabelaisian gros sel, equally
attracted by the popping of the corks or the
rustle of a petticoat.

In his early youth Bonivard had been placed
under the care of his uncle, Jean-Ame Bonivard,
Prior of St Victor, on the outskirts of Geneva.
Here he had followed his childish bent, growing
fat and learning much about a naughty world,
until it was discovered that he could not even
read ! Straightway the protesting Frangois was
sent off to a respectable and learned abbot in
Piedmont, where a considerable amount of
knowledge was forced into his reluctant, but by
no means sluggish, brain. Thence he proceeded
to the university of Turin, and later to Fribourg
and Strasburg. Then came news of his uncle's
death to interrupt his joyous life ; but Jean-
Ame had bequeathed to his scapegrace nephew,
E 65

Switzerland

with the Pope's consent, the Abbey of St Victor.
Frangois returned in high feather to Geneva,
to make merry with his ecclesiastical revenues,
though strenuously refusing to enter holy orders.

At this time there was a strong patriotic party
in Geneva plotting to throw off the yoke of Savoy.
Frangois threw himself wholeheartedly into
this dangerous game, boldly tossing down the
gauntlet to Duke Amadeus. Along with St
Victor he had inherited from his uncle the
manor of Cartigny, and also some old bronze
artillery which Jean-Ame had directed him
to melt down and cast into a peal of bells for the
abbey. But Bonivard preferred to present them
to his friends in the city for less peaceful purposes,
a hostile act which Amadeus never forgot.

But meantime Geneva was beginning to
give ear to the doctrines of the Reformation.
Francois embraced the theories with avidity,
though feeling it quite unnecessary to square
his conduct with them. He went to Rome, to
find, he said, " irrefutable arguments " against
the Papacy.

On his return he called together the leading
lights among the reformers, announcing that he
was going to read to them the two books then
most in favour with the cardinals. But alas !
the favoured literature of Rome proved to be
in the style approved by less holy men. There
was consternation among that assembly of

Chillon

Genevan gowns and bands. Interest and
chuckles of sensual delight fought hard with
pious horror, until there rose up an austere
divine, who with righteous wrath rebuked the
simple youth. Then with great dignity the
man of God retired, taking with him the soberer
of his followers, and Francois finished up his
reading amid the plaudits of those listeners
who remained. " I always knew," cried the
unrepentant one, " that in every man there dwells
a swine, whether he be a Roman Catholic or
a Protestant of Geneva ! Long live human
nature ! "

Now, the Church in all her majesty swooped
down upon the abbot of St Victor. The Eucharist
was forbidden him for two years, and meantime
he was advised to quit Geneva. After a period
of adventurous wanderings he returned to his
adopted city, only to find that his old revolu-
tionary comrade, Berthelier^ had been put to
death. He himself was seized and forced by the
Duke of Savoy to resign his priory. For a time
he was imprisoned, but, on the intercession of
the Bishop of Geneva, was allowed to retire to
his manor of Cartigny. Here he established
himself " with six arquebuses and six pounds of
gunpowder given to him by the people of Geneva."
On his gate he hung a warning to those who might
dare to enter ; to drive his moral home a carcass
creaked in chains on a neighbouring gibbet.

Switzerland

But both Savoy and the Vatican were out-
raged at this independence ; a troop of soldiers
surrounded the house, and Frangois was forced
to fly. Geneva gave him refuge, but Amadeus
sent him word that outside its sheltering walls
he need expect no mercy. At this point his
mother fell ill, and Frangois courageously set
out to pay his filial respects. At Moudon he
fell into a trap, and was taken prisoner by a
company of archers, who carried him off to the
chateau of Chillon.

Thus began his six years of imprisonment.
At first he was comfortably lodged, but when
the Duke came to visit him Francois received
him with disrespect. Raising his fingers to his
nose, he complained of the smell of sulphur that
entered with his Highness. But the joke cost
him dear, for he was straightway thrown into
the underground dungeon, where the rest of his
captivity was spent.

Bonivard seems to have borne his imprison-
ment in that philosophical spirit with which the
Middle Ages were accustomed to regard these
small vicissitudes of life. There is actually a
pathway trodden by his footsteps in the dungeon
floor, but while recognising the unvarying cour-
age of the prisoner, I cannot bring myself to
look upon this prison as " a holy place, and its
sad floor an altar."

When the Bernese troops swept triumphantly

Chill

through the Pays de Vaud in 1536, they opened
the doors of Chillon to the prisoner. The
Genevese received him with open arms, took the
burden of his poverty upon themselves, made
him a member of the Council of State with a
pension of two hundred crowns a year, and gave
him a house to live in. " Bonivard," says the
historian, Jean Senebier, " when he left his
prison behind him, had the pleasure of finding
Geneva free and reformed." Reformed the
city undoubtedly was, too much so for the ex-
Prior of St Victor ; but though freed from the
domination of Savoy, there was little liberty
in the city whose morals and manners Calvin
regulated.

Francois' joyous past had not been forgotten
by the burghers. It was specially laid down
that he must lead a decent and sober life, that
his children, if he had any, must be born in
wedlock, that on no account must he take a
young female to be his housekeeper. For the
reformers, though profoundly ignorant of any
broad principles of morality, were fanatically
devoted to the legal forms of respectability.
Frangois submitted with a sigh, and married
Catherine Baumgartner, who took his affairs
thoroughly in hand. She succeeded in getting
many privileges for her husband from the
Council, not forgetting " half an ell of velvet

for a petticoat " as a reward for her own exer-

Switzerland

tions. But his matrimonial affairs were a sore
trial both to Bonivard and to Geneva. The old
Adam was by no means dead within him ; his
conduct after his first wife's death soon brought
the heavy hand of the Council down upon him.
A threat to lodge him in the Hotel de Ville under
the stern eye of the holy men drove him post
haste again into matrimony.

Jeanne d'Armeis was his second choice, a
widow well endowed with property. They did
not get on well together, and Frangois was
summoned before the Council on a charge of
beating her severely. He managed, however,
to persuade the judges that his wife deserved it —
never in those days a very difficult task, when the
whole duty of woman was to obey her husband.
But Jeanne followed her predecessor quickly
to the grave, and after the manner of the
reformers, Fran9ois promptly took another wife,
also blessed with property. For twelve years
she ministered to him as a good wife should, and
then died, and her money passed to her son by a
former marrage.

Frangois felt aggrieved, and received into his
house Catherine de Courtavonne, a nun who had
been driven from her convent by the Reformation,
and with her a soi-disant cousin. Catherine's
manners had lost the austerity of monastic life,
and the house of Bonivard soon became the one
spot where the sternly repressed mirth and

Chillon

gaiety of Geneva could overflow. Unfortun-
ately these goings-on could not be hidden.
The genial host was rebuked sternly by the city
magnates, and threats of dire penalties were
levelled at him, unless he should instantly
sanctify his relationship with Catherine by
presenting her with a wedding ring.

The old man grumbled, but gave in. Much
to the astonishment of pious Geneva, the
marriage ceremony did not put a stop to the
joyous gatherings at his house. It was hardly
to be expected that Frangois could refrain from
satirising these unco guid. One night, under
the influence of the good Rhine wine, he rashly
recited a scandalous chorus he had composed
about " ces messieurs de Geneve." It was
enthusiastically received by his guests, who all
took up the refrain. As they reeled homewards
that night, they made the streets of Calvin's city
ring with its ribald measures.

The excited diners were taken into custody,
and a strict examination was made into the
domestic affairs of M. de St Victor. The
comedy quicldy turned to tragedy. Catherine
de Courtavonne was accused of infidelity to her
husband, and was brought to trial. Frangois
did all he could to save her, swearing that
never had she given him reason for suspicion.
" Ces messieurs " knew better. The Reforma-
tion had unloosed some of the most hideous

Switzerland

passions of mankind. To these Catherine fell a
victim.

Her cousin, who was said to be her paramour,
was beheaded. Catherine was tied up in a sack,
and thrown into the Rhone.

Such were the gentle and most Christian
customs of the Reformed or Protestant Church
of Geneva.

Bonivard did not live long after this horrible
murder. In 1570 he died childless, murmuring
with his latest breath against the oppressors
of his adopted city. But notwithstanding, he
made the republic his heir, leaving all his books
and manuscripts to form the nucleus of a public
library. His beautiful fifteenth-century editions
can still be seen at Geneva. " He loved know-
ledge," says Senebier, " and did all he could
to give it a home in this rising city." Freedom
he loved as v/ell, but, delivering his city from
one tyranny, he unwittingly handed it over to
another far more intimate and oppressive.

1 » : •

IN ARCADIA

Amid the clangour and fuss of the tourist whirl
you may listen in vain for the melody which has
charmed the Switzer out of the ranks of foreign
armies and haunts the ears of the opulent hotel
director in London and Paris. The " Ranz des
Vaches " is rarely heard near the great tourist
centres. It will greet you with every sunset on
the lush green uplands which overlook the
Sarine and the Broye. There the herdsman
still melodiously calls the cattle home, and there
you still expect to find Phyllis flirting with
Corydon in costumes designed by Watteau. If
Little Bo-peep has not yet found her sheep, the
canton Fribourg, most of all the Gru3^ere dis-
trict, is the place to look for them.

The valley famed all the world over for its
cheese is the Switzerland of romance, not the
Switzerland of the climber and the artist. The
snowclad mountains charm but do not overawe.
They rise as a benign background to the light
green of the meadows and the dark green of the
pines ; they are seen at the ends of groves made
for lovers' dalliance ; and the chalets on their
verdant slopes are ideal nests for pastoral
mates. Here we are in Arcadia, and here the

Switzerland

traditions of that happy land have Hngered
longest.

The region, it need not be said, was not named
after its most renowned and esteemed product.
Old chroniclers averred that Gruyerius was the
chief of the band of Vandals who first settled
in the lower valley, or else that this band had
adopted as its device that wandering bird, the
crane. From grue to Gruyere the transition is
easy — easier than from Vandals to Arcadians.
For a long time these barbarians never ventured
to penetrate into the upper valley, which was
closed against them by a formidable barrier of
rock and guarded, as they believed, by a frightful
demon. At last, while hunting the bear, an
intrepid youth scaled the mountain-wall and
gazed for the first time on the green pastures of
the upper Gruyere, into which he led his com-
rades, rejoicing exceedingly.

So the whole region became peopled, and, like
the rest of what is now Switzerland, it became
part of the Burgundian kingdom. In the tenth
century it was known as Ogo, a contraction
probably of the German Hochgau, and Turim-
bert founded the line of counts, to whom the
shepherds and shepherdesses, the cheese-makers
and the cowherds, looked for six centuries for
guidance. These paternal sovereigns dwelt in
the high-peaked castle which surmounts the
little town of Gruyeres. You climb up to it by

In Arcadia

la steep and toilsome path known as the Charriere
des Morts, possibly because of the ghastly
crucifix, with gaping red wounds, which greets
your eyes at the town gate. Restored and re-
built heaven knows how many times, the castle
to-day looks much as it must have looked in its
prime, thanks to the loving care of its present
owner and his immediate predecessor. It was
at one time the property of a M. Bovy of Geneva,
whose brother, Daniel, an artist of repute, has
recorded the history of the Gruyere in fine
vigorous fashion on the walls of the hall of
honour. There you may see the coming of
Gruyerius into the valley, and next the departure
of the men of Gruyere for the crusade, headed
by the knights, Hugues and Turnius : they give
their lands to the Abbey of Rougemont, and
crying : " S'agit d'aller ! reviendra qui pourra ! "
they leave the castle and the drawbridge is
drawn up behind them. Turnius and Hugues,
it need not be said, proved themselves the
bravest knights in the Christian host. Not less
remarkable were the feats of the counts who
stayed behind, one of whom is shown delivering
a beautiful stranger from a long captivity upon
the taking of the town of Rue. Nor does the
painter leave uncommemorated the valour of
those heroic shepherds, Clarimbert and Ulric
Bras-de-fer, who drag the count from the midst
of a horde of enemies, and hold the pass against

Switzerland

him for many hours, till their great swords
become literally glued to their horny hands
with blood. They were terrible fellows, these
Gruyeriens, and worthy of them were their
wives, who, being left alone and attacked by the
Bernese, put them to flight by driving against
them a flock of goats with flaming torches stuck
on their horns ! In this heroic manner did the
counts and people of Gruyere maintain their
liberties against the powerful republics of
Fribourg and Berne.

But it was in the arts of peace that the
counts most excelled, surpassing indeed all their
contemporaries in their knowledge of the gay
saber. They did everything they could to make
themselves and their subjects happy. In dance
and song they delighted. One Sunday good
Count Rodolphe and five courtiers took hands
and started to dance on the castle terrace.
Presently they danced down into the town.
The lads and lasses came out and joined hands
with them. Away they went, dancing all
through the summer night over hill and dale
and meadow. The cowherds left their oxen
and followed, the goats skipped after the dancers.
The Count was well-nigh exhausted, but he
would not give in. He was, as we should say,
a sportsman. At last, on Tuesday morning,
seven hundred dancers collapsed, completely

blown, in the market-place of Gessenay, having

In Arcadia

traversed the whole long valley from end to end.
IThose were days when folk could dance indeed.

Then came the joyous days of Count Antoine,
who would lead the " Ranz des Vaches " and
could pipe against any of his lusty cowherds
and sprightly milkmaids. He it was who held a
great picnic on the bank of the lac d'Arnon, and
feasted the swains on twenty chamois and a
thousand cheeses. But alas ! a storm came on
and all the tents were overset. Cory don and
Phyllis were drenched to the skin, and the
jovial Count was well-nigh drowned while
swimming the torrent of the Tourneresse.

Nor did these good counts neglect the more
serious duties of their station. Thev traversed
the country, sometimes on foot, settling disputes
under the greenwood tree, dowering poor maidens
and otherwise consoling them, reconciling lovers,
and showering gold and silver on all who came
their way. So at least Count Pierre III. was
assured that his ancestors behaved by his wise
fool, Girard Chalamala, who was a living
archive of the little state. You may see his
strange-looking house outside the castle, dis-
tinguished by frightful gargoyles. It was ac-
quired, to save it from destruction, by M. Victor
Tissot, the author of " La Suisse Inconnue." On
its walls may be read some of the fool's sayings,
such as " The secret of little souls is known only
to little souls," which sounds profound. Here

Switzerland

the jester used to hold his courts of folly, to
which his master was admitted on condition
that he removed his spurs. This precaution was
necessary, for his lordship had cruelly kicked
his fool when, on being asked what he thought
of the new countess, he answered : "If I were
lord of Gruyeres I would rather keep my pretty
mistress than marry an ugly wife." Chalamala
also exerted himself to keep alive the chateau
d'amour tourneys, in wliich a wooden castle
was vigorously defended and attacked by bands
of young men. In after years the castle of love
was garrisoned by the prettiest girls of the town
— at Fribourg at least — and was attacked by
youths armed with garlands and nosegays. The
fortress always surrendered on terms, which were
that every damsel should give one of the be-
siegers a kiss. My authority for the existence
of this custom — the " Conservateur suisse "
published at Tausanne in 1814 — asserts, to the
immense relief of us moderns, that these pro-
ceedings were conducted with the utmost seemli-
ness and always in presence of the fathers,
mothers, and as many maiden aunts as could be
got together.

The wise Chalamala died in 1349, leaving his
friend, the parson of Gruyeres, fifteen sous to buy
a cow with, and to the Count, his master, his cap
and bells and all his debts. The annals he had
collected of the history of the county were

In Arcadia

stored in the castle, but were unluckily de-
stroyed by fire.

You may see a copy of his will hung on the
castle walls, and you are also shown the chamber
of Luce d'Albergeuse, the loveliest shepherdess
in the country, whom the last count but one
made his mistress at the cost of the finest
mountain in his realm. Near Montsalvens they
point out a path called the charriere de creve
cceur, because along it, they say, the countess,
with a breaking heart, saw her husband ride
in quest of his leman. I doubt very much if
high-born dames in those days were much
troubled by their lord's wandering fancies.
They married for place and power, and there
could have been little pretence of love on either
side. Their vanity may have been hurt, not
their heart. It is the forsaken mistress that I
pity, who, after having ruled for years practically
as queen, found herself suddenly hustled out of
sight or even sometimes compelled to bow before
her lover's new bride. I cannot see why a
woman who marries from worldly gain should
grumble if her husband, having fulfilled his
bargain, chooses to bestow his affections else-
where.

But the joyous life of the counts of Gruyeres
could not last for ever. They danced away the
shoes off their feet and the clothes off their back.
They literally sold portions of their patrimony

Switzerland

for a song. And they had taught their people
to dance and sing all day, not to amass wealth on
which taxes could be levied. The merchants of
Berne and Fribourg were always ready to lend
the Arcadians money, and these light-hearted
folk never asked themselves how it was to be
paid back. The counts skipped about like kids
and frolicked with their subjects, but often
returned home to find their creditors awaiting
them with a bill us long as their coraule. Michel,
who became count in 1539, speedily found him-
self bankrupt. He had passed his youth at the
Court of Frangois Premier, where he had con-
tracted expensive tastes, which he was unable to
curb.

In the ballads of the Gruyere he is hailed as :

" Michel li preux, li beaux,
Fleur de tous aulters damoiseaux."

He was in reality a futile sort of person, re-
markable only for the magnitude of his debts.
He was first neither in the dance nor the field.
He worked hard for the King of France but
achieved no particular distinction in his service ;
and the 4000 men he sent to fight for his Majesty
at Ceresole fled from the field like their name-
sakes, the cranes. Nor did he show to much
advantage in his relations with a Polish prince,
Frederick, Duke of Liegnitz. This potentate, a
bankrupt like the Count, paid a visit to Switzer-

In Arcadia

land to escape his creditors and quartered him-
self at the castle of Gruyeres. He persuaded
Michel to lend him 2000 crowns, which his
unfortunate host had to borrow, and went off to
spend them at Fribourg. Hearing that he was
living in great style, the Count followed him and
presented him with a bill not only for the money
lent but for the cost of his entertainment. The
Duke tartly replied that he would refund the
loan, but certainly not the cost of his board and
lodging at Gruyeres. Had he known that the
Count carried on business as an innkeeper he
would have gone elsewhere. All the same, the
tribunal of Fribourg ordered him to pay the
full amount claimed. As he had not a crown in
his pocket, he had to leave his jewels as security,
and these Michel had to share with the inn-
keeper who had accommodated the Duke at
Fribourg. The unfortunate Count now owed
not less than a million and a half francs of our
money. He married a rich widow of Burgundy ,
who placed her fortune at his disposal, but this
proved to be a mere drop in the ocean of his
debts. He borrowed right and left, sinking
ever deeper into the mire. As a last resource,
he appealed to his subjects to take upon them-
selves all his liabilities, offering in return to make
them free sovereign burgesses like those of the
forest cantons. The Arcadians were not too

simple to refuse. Finally, on 9th November
F 81

Switzerland

1554, the commission appointed by the cantons
to Hquidate the Count's affairs adjudged his
dominions to his creditors and released his
subjects from their allegiance. On the same
day the last Count of Gruyeres and his wife
quitted his ancestral castle for ever, and the
little state, having endured under one dynasty
six hundred years, was divided between the
towns of Fribourg and Berne.

Michel, heartlessly abandoning his natural
daughter, Guillauma, in the castle of Oron,
passed into the service of France. He made
vain efforts to recover his county through the
mediation of the kings of France and Spain,
and died in the Netherlands in the year 1576.
Such was the unromantic end — sold up by
brokers ! — of the race which resembled most
closely the princes of old romance. Idylls
in real life often do finish like that.

The castle, at any rate, has recovered much
of its former glory, and is probably much better
kept and furnished than it was in the days of
the counts. Besides the frescoes by Bovy, you
may see panels painted by his friends Corot,
Baron, Salzmann, and other modern masters,
while his guests at the castle. You will enjoy
most the glimpses of mountain and valley from
the loops in the thick walls ; and feel something
of that exhilaration which caused count and cow-
herd to take hands and dance awa

THE VALAIS

The Valais is the Cinderella of the cantons.
A long, narrow trench, excavated by the Rhone
and its parent glaciers, it is completely shut
out from the rest of the world by gigantic
mountain- walls, which approach so closely to-
wards the bend in the river as almost to forbid
egress. Such a cul-de-sac seems to have been
designed as a refuge for the unfitted to survive ;
and indeed Hans Andersen's chamois hunter
described it as having been a bagful of cretins
and hot air. Then, he told little Rudy, the
French came and made a hole at each end of
the bag, killed all the cretins, and let in the air.
Since then a real hole has been made through the
Simplon mountain, and another is being pierced
in the Lotschberg to the north of it. So the four
winds of heaven blow now through the valley,
and the cretins have had no choice but to slink up
the lateral slopes. Along the furrow of the Rhone
rush trains from Paris to Milan and Brindisi, soon
to be met near Brieg by the expresses from Berne
and Germany and the far north. The Valais,
so closed in that we marvel that its existence
should have been suspected by the ancients,
has now become a great international highway.

Switzerland

It is a country of contrasts, this Swiss canton.
Ice and snow permanently cover a larger pro-
portion of ground here than in any other of the
confederate states. Nowhere else in Switzer-
land do the mountains soar so high, or is Nature
more majestic and terrible in her frown. The
Matterhorn and Monte Rosa delight the most
venturesome mountaineers, and between these
peaks lane-like valleys run headlong down
through a score of climates to the Rhone, where
little white cities sit embowered in orchards and
vineyards, scorching beneath an African sky.
In the canton Valais the camel and the reindeer
might each find a home.

Its isolation notwithstanding, the region has
from time immemorial been the battleground of
contending races, of Latin and Celt, Romance
against Teutonic. The skeletons of castles
which gleam white on the hillocks by the Rhone
are mementoes of the long struggle between
barons and people, feudal lord and chartered
town, which was the Pax Romana of the bastard
Empire. Conquered by the legionaries after a
great fight at Octodura or Martigny, fifty-seven
years before Christ, the people of the valley be-
came so Romai ised as to lose all traces of their
Celtic origin. Succeeding waves of barbarians
left little pools behind them, which also became
absorbed in the Latin stream. Meanwhile a
bishop arose at Sion, and to him Rodolphe III.,

> • V » >

.St

o
(0

The Valais

last king of the second Burgundy, granted
sovereign rights over the valley from the
Furka down to the Trient. This was in the year
999, and for seven hundred years the country
was involved in the hopeless, bloody tangle of
the mediaeval political structure. Jurisdiction
overlapped jurisdiction, there were lords
spiritual and lords temporal, towns free, towns
half-free, towns subject ; barons who held of
the emperor, barons who held of the bishop,
barons who held of both ; freemen, serfs, ec-
clesiastics ; all sorts and conditions of men,
owning each half-a-dozen masters. No wonder
that the race withered, that disease flourished,
that rapine and murder ran riot, where no man
knew whose business it was to govern or where
he might call the land his own.

In the thirteenth century a band of Germans
from the Hasli valley near Meiringen crossed
the Grimsel and settled on the upper reaches of
the Rhone. About the same time we first hear
of the seven dizains or communes which the
bishop had endowed with certain liberties.
These were Sion, Sierre, Leuk, Visp, Raron,
Brieg, and Conches. All but the two first of
them became thoroughly Germanised by the
settlers, which was perhaps why the Emperor
Charles IV. was persuaded in the year 1354 to
confirm their charters and to forbid the Count
of Savoy to interfere with them. In defiance

Switzerland

of the Imperial injunction, upon the murder of
Bishop Tavelh in 1375, Count Amadeus VI.
promptly installed his cousin, Edouard of Belley,
in the vacant see. The communes, however,
would have none of the new prelate and drove
him out of Sion. Thenceforward there was
open war between the men of the dizains and
their neighbour from over the Alps. The Ger-
mans of the upper Valais inflicted a severe
defeat on the Count's lieutenant and his allies in
the country itself, but the Latins of Sion and
Sierre had to ask mercy of the Count upon their
knees. In the end Savoy was left in possession
of all the territory below the Trient. Checked
in this direction, the men of the upper communes
allied themselves with the forest cantons, and
occupied themselves with expeditions into the
valley of Ossola. They again met with a re-
verse, and in their rage and disappointment
looked round for a weaker foe. They found one
in an ally of the hated Savoy, the lord of Raron,
a noble who had already offended the people by
his insistence upon the elementary laws of
sanitation. This early municipal reformer was
condemned in a popular assembly near Brieg
by a process peculiar to the Valais. A man
stood in the midst of the crowd holding the
Mazze, a huge club on which was carved the rude
likeness of a human face in deep affliction.
The grotesque image was questioned as to the

The Valais

author of his woes. "Is it Sihnen ? Is it
AsperHn ? " The Mazze was silent. "Is it
Raron ? " The image bowed its head. There-
upon the men present raised their arms to
signify adhesion to the cause of the wronged,
and each drove a nail into the symbolical
victim's body in testimony of their sympathy —
which seems an odd way of expressing it. Thus
adorned, the Mazze was carried round like a fiery
cross ; wherever it appeared the people took up
arms. Before the righteous wrath of the un-
washed, the hygienist of Raron fled in dismay.
The men of the dizains wrecked his castles and
those of his allies. Upon the intervention of
Berne, the communes made good the damage
they had done, but the nobles were only suffered
to return upon relinquishing all their feudal
claims. After this, I presume, the worthy
townsfolk were free to build dung-heaps in the
open street and no one had to wash his face more
than once a year.

Having thus crushed the nobles and vindicated
the rights of the dirty, the Germans of the
Valais in 1457 scored a final victory over their
Latin compatriots by getting one of their
number, Walther Supersaxo, elected bishop.
They next allied themselves with Berne, and,
finding that the Count of Savoy was leagued
with Charles the Bold against their ally, over-
ran the lower Valais and held it by right of

Switzerland

sword. Savoy never recovered her hold on the
valley.

Switzerland is the land of strange aristo-
cracies. So far from regarding themselves as
the liberators of the people downstream, the
people upstream regarded them as their sub-
jects and deemed themselves their lords. Out-
wardly it was merely the ridiculous supremacy
of one group of hamlets over another ; in reality
it was the domination of German over Latin-
Celt and of the men who had always held their
own over the men who had not. As in Vaud,
the Latins had good reason to regret the change
of masters. In 15 12 the little state, thus
aggrandised, took part in the Milanese war, and
was henceforward reckoned an ally of the Swiss
confederates. Her weight was always thrown
on the side of the Catholic cantons, but the
Protestants were numerous enough to secure
toleration. Combining with these dissenters,
the democrats of the dizains in 1613 wrung from
the chapter of the vacant see a renunciation of
all the bishop's temporal powers over the valley.
Soon after, Antoine Stockalper, a member of one
of the most famous families in the region, was
detected in a conspiracy to restore the Episcopal
authority. He was tortured and beheaded at
Leuk. But no gratitude was shown to the Pro-
testants, who had a hard fight to preserve their
liberties down to the approach of the Revolution.

The Valais

As in Vaud, so in Valais. Upon the news of
what was passing in France, the downtrodden
peasantry of the lower valley rose against the
bailiffs set over them by the seven dizains. They
were subdued and cruelly punished. But when
the French army appeared on the frontiers of
Vaud, the village oligarchy thought conciliation
the wiser policy. In the cathedral of Sion they
solemnly renounced all claims to supremacy
over their countrymen in the lower Valais, and
declared them admitted to equal political rights.
They might have spared themselves this ser-
render, for presently the whole Valais was
annexed to the Frenchified Helvetic confedera-
tion. The men of the seven dizains sullenly
acquiesced. The moment the gjQgian bayonets
gleamed on the Simplon they threw off the
mask, and attacked the French with unex-
ampled fury. Having taken an officer prisoner,
they buried him up to the waist and stoned him
to death. The French took a fearful revenge.
They fell upon these savages by night, and cut
them to pieces ; they drove their Muscovite
allies helter-skelter over the Alps and ravaged
the valley from Sion to the Furka.

Unluckily for the reactionaries of the Valais,

Napoleon had perceived that the shortest road

into Italy lay through their country. With

scowls and inward apprehension, the village

tyrants beheld the emissaries of civilisation at

Switzerland

work, making roads, bridging streams, levelling
rocks, and finally ringing round the Simplon
itself with a broad highroad — fit for cannon —
into Italy. The conquest of their valley, the
greybeards groaned, was now for ever accom-
plished. The armies of Europe could march
at will up and down the Rhone ; worse still, they
might be followed by pestilent ideas of freedom
and fraternity.

In 1802 Napoleon, to remove his road from
the control of the Helvetic confederation, sud-
denly erected Valais into the Rhodanic Republic.
In 18 10 as abruptly he declared this ephemeral
state a part of the French empire under the
name of Department of the Simplon. We can
imagine with what joy the Germans of the seven
dizains, yearning for the Egyptian night, wel-
comed the Austrian invaders three years later.
True, they had to join the reorganised con-
federation ; but they took care in framing their
cantonal constitution to secure the ascendancy
of the upper valley over the much more popu-
lous lower. Nowhere were aristocratic privileges
more tenaciously maintained than in Switzer-
land, possibly because they represented in so
many cases the tradition of the sword. For
over thirty years the little country was torn
between the Conservative and Liberal factors,
representing roughly the German and French
elements of the population. In 1839 there was

The Valais

open war in the valley. There was a Liberal
Government at Sion, a reactionary Government
at Sierre. The former defeated the latter in a
pitched battle at Bramois. Thinking them-
selves betrayed by their commander, De Courten,
the losers murdered his aged brother in his own
house. A savage streak ran ever through these
men of the upper glaciers. In 1844 they turned
the tables on their opponents and defeate 1
them with considerable bloodshed at Trient.
Having secured control of the canton, they
carried it into the Sonderbund, and shared the
overthrow of that ill-fated combination. Even
when the other Catholic cantons had laid down
their arms, Valais, in her wolfish, stubborn way,
meditated resistance ; but wisdom prevailed
over ferocity, and her council by a narrow
majority decided on submission to the central
power.

Since the triumphant entry of the federal
troops, Sion has become the seat of an in-
tensely Liberal Government, but, half-feudal,
half-rustic, still bears on her physiognomy the
impress of her past. High over the town, the
bishop's castle of Tourbillon mounts guard over
the valley ; southward, you may climb up to the
better-preserved stronghold of Valeria, enshrin-
ing the ancient chapel of St Catharine, and
thence look down on a third castle, that of
Majoria, first inhabited by the town major or

Switzerland

governor, then by the bishop when he lost his
temporal power. The actual residence of his
lordship adjoins the cathedral, a rather pleasing
structure described in the guide-book as a
mixture of Romanesque and Early Pointed
architecture. One of the few " sights " in the
little town is the house of George Supersaxo, a
sixteenth-century member of a famous local
family. He was the leader of the French
faction, despite his German descent, and was
driven out of the country, to die within sight of
it at Vevey. He it was who demolished the
castle of Batraz built by Peter of Savoy in 1260
in the vicinity of Martigny. He was the father
of twenty-three children who are represented
with him and his wife over an altar in the pil-
grimage church of Glis.

Supersaxo flourished during the episcopate of
Matthew Schinner, whose life reminds one of that
of his contemporary Wolsey. He was born, the
child of poor parents, near Viesch, and with great
difficulty and amid severe privations succeeded
in educating himself for the priesthood. Luckily
for him one of his uncles became Bishop of Sion,
and, recognising the young ecclesiastic's talents,
after a time abdicated in his favour. The new
prelate distinguished himself by his zeal for
the papacy and was employed by Juhus H. to
preach a crusade against the French throughout
Switzerland. To his solicitations was due in

The Valais

great part the defeat of the invaders of the Milan-
ese. In 1516, Schinner was sent to the Court of
England, as envoy to the Emperor Maximilian,
and obtained a heavy subsidy from Henry VIII.
to carry on the war against France. The Bishop
of Sion became a powerful prince, and was
rewarded for his services to the Pope by the
cardinal's hat — an honour very rarely conferred,
I believe, on the Swiss or their subject nation-
alities.

Brieg, the next most important town in the
Valais — now, perhaps, the most important — is
a Spanish-looking place, also abounding in
memorials of the aristocratic period. It was
the residence of many wealthy families engaged
in trade with Italy. The foremost of these were
the Stockalpers, who attained in the seventeenth
century to the position held by the Pfyffers at
Lucerne. Gaspard Stockalper was called the
King of the Simplon. He was a knight of the
Empire, a citizen of Milan, a baron of Savoy,
grand bailiff of his own country. Having
amassed an immense fortune in the salt trade,
he built the enormous palace which still remains
the largest private building in Switzerland.
Composed of several wings and enclosing many
courts, this mansion is redeemed from mere
heaviness by its tall, graceful towers, which,
surmounted by tin cupolas in the Saracen style,
form landmarks for miles around. A graceful

Switzerland

double bridge named the Bridge of Sighs leads
across the public street to the curious chapel.
Within, the vast halls are given up to dust and
silence, except in the wing where the Simplon
railway administration has installed its offices.
The palace by its splendour excited the jealousy
and cupidity of the dizains of Valais. In 1678,
Stockalper was cited before an irregularly con-
stituted tribunal to answer a charge of malversa-
tion. Knowing v/hat justice to expect from his
judges, the old Baron fled across the Alps,
abandoning the greater part of his immense
property.

A hospice on the pass commemorates the
charity of this unfortunate merchant-prince ;
while the great Ursuline convent, dating from
1663, illustrates his zeal for the Catholic faith.
Brieg has fared better at the hands of time and
the invader than Visp, to the westward, whose
old mansions are now divided into wretched
tenements ; or than the once wealthy villages,
higher up the Rhone, which one passes in dreary
and apparently endless succession till the work of
man becomes lost in the glory of the everlasting
snow.

Near Viesch is one of the most curious and
beautiful sights of Switzerland, the Marjelen See,
the lake which disappears at intervals in a single
night. Most probably when you have toiled up
the bridle-path that meanders up and round the

The Valais

mountain you will come suddenly upon a lake
whose still, deep blue waters reflect the shadows
of the snow-crowned peaks of the Strahlhorn
and the Eggishorn. Roughly triangular in
form, it measures between two and three miles
from base to apex, with an average breadth of a
quarter of a mile. The western shore is over-
hung by lofty, sharply serrated cliffs hewn out
of virgin ice. They are an intense hyacinth-
blue in colour, except at the margin of the waters,
where they are broken up into floes and small
boulders of dazzling whiteness, just as though
some old magician had frozen the waters as they
broke in foam. Through the wonderful trans-
lucency of this ice barrier you may see into the
fissured heart of the great Aletsch glacier. If it
is summer and the Swiss sunshine is beating
down, the cliffs will slowly transform them-
selves, before your eyes, into a thousand fairy
shapes amid a kaleidoscopic blaze of colour.

But it may be that you will find only a deep
hollow where you looked for a lake, with cliffs
double the height the guide-books lead you to
expect. For sixteen times within the last
thirty years, after an exceptional spell of heat,
have the ice walls given way under the enormous
pressure of the waters. Fissures appear in all
directions, until quite suddenly the wall is
pierced right through and under the Aletsch
glacier. The lake water moves swiftly away,

Switzerland

often to carry havoc and destruction into the
valley of the Rhone.

You will be particularly fortunate if you
should visit the Marjelen See when this strange
subsidence is taking place, for the lake gives
no warning of its coming disappearance. For
about a day there is a gradual sinking of the
level of the waters that would pass unnoticed
but for the ice-floes which are stranded. Then
suddenly comes a roar from beneath the glacier,
and the thunder of rushing waters. Huge ice-
boulders lower themselves from the overhanging
cliffs and come crashing and splashing into the
blue-green waters down below. Lower and
lower sinks the water ; ever more intensely blue
are the masses of ice, newly exposed to view.

Terror seizes the hearts of shepherds or cow-
boys who hear the sinister sound. They will
leave their cattle on the mountain-side and fly
down into the Rhone valley to warn the in-
habitants of the approaching menace. Custom
decrees that the first messenger who brings the
news shall be presented with a new pair of shoes
at the expense of the valley : a reward, one
would think, hardly proportionate to the ser-
vice rendered when the valley folk are thus
enabled to remove their flocks and herds to a
place of safety.

Above Viesch you ma}/ follow the Rhone to
its famed cavern in the ice, and beyond, where

. * ■■ » : .»

»-, . . -.

s ; •: w^\

c
_o

0)
't*

The Valais

the road from Uri zigzags down the Furka Hke
frozen forked lightning. Over this pass and the
gloomy Grimsel, by which the first Germans
came into the Valais, pours year after year a
dense, enthusiastic, clamant stream of tourists
of every nationality under heaven. Some are
absorbed by the railway at Brieg and distributed
over Savoy, the Pays de Vaud, and the world
beyond; others are disgorged at Visp and di-
verted into the long valley of Zermatt. Com-
paratively few penetrate the two parallel valleys
beyond, those of Anniviers and Kerens, which
were, I fancy, first described by Victor Tissot.
The people of the Val d' Anniviers are said to be
descended from the Huns ; and you have only
to look at their ugly faces to believe it. They
are at any rate nomadic, like the tribesmen of
Attila, and in the vintage season migrate to
Sierre, where you may see their cottages stand-
ing empty at other times of the year. " The
parish priest of Vissoye," says M. Tissot, " mi-
grates at the head of his flock, with the school-
master, the president, and all the authorities.
The families follow one after the other, like a
caravan in the desert. First comes the mule,
heavily laden, led by the head of the family,
with the little children snugly packed in the
panniers, like birds in their nests ; then the
wife, taking charge of the goats, the sheep, and
the calves ; and behind her the pigs trot grunt-

G 97

Switzerland

ing along, driven by a thin little giri with tangled
hair, or a toothless old woman armed with a
thick stick." The vineyards at Sierre are owned
by the communes of the valley jointly, and the
people go out to cultivate them as a body to the
sound of fife and drum.

They must, I imagine, welcome this annual
outing, for life in their own valley is so cheer-
less that it is called by pious people the Valley
of Heaven. The thoughts of these curious
peasants turn perpetually gravewards. Mar-
riage and birth are for them the occasions of
sighings and groanings ; but a funeral is the
pretext for universal rejoicing and for display.
*' We save up all our lives for our funerals,"
observe the peasants ; a practice which sug-
gests that their ancestors should be looked for
among the London poor rather than on the
steppes of Asia. They know neither song nor
dance ; and like most people who think a lot
about a future life, they devote all their interests
and energies to increasing their worldly posses-
sions. In striking contrast to these sad, grasping
folks are their neighbours of the Val d'Herens.
They are a vigorous race, who love wine, woman,
and song, gaudy costumes, and an occasional
fight ; for which reason the pious people afore-
said call this the Devil's Valley. Not having
the wisdom of the children of hght, they do not
ask a dowry from their brides, but make of their

The Valais

marriages a festival to which all their neigh-
bours are bidden. " In former days the bride's
maids wore crowns of artificial flowers, while
the bridegroom and his men wore black coats.
After the first meal the guests went out and
threw into the air handfuls of apples, which they
caught in their hats ; and those who caught the
most were sure to be the happiest during the
year. Then they promenaded through the
village, and danced on the green to the music
of a violin."

Knowing something of the characters of the
two peoples, you will not be surprised to hear
that in the struggles for freedom in the first half
of last century the natives of the Heavenly
Valley took no part, but that the merry men of
Evolene in the Val d' Kerens fought and bled for
their own and their countrymen's liberty. The
Anniviards were no doubt too busy burying their
dead and adding field to field to help them, ex-
cept by their prayera.

THE DOGS OF ST BERNARD

In a small room in the natural history museum
of Berne is preserved the stuffed body of Barry,
the illustrious St Bernard dog. He is exhibited
here as a specimen of the Swiss fauna. His
virtues and the nobility of his career deserve a
monument far grander than that of the mer-
cenaries of Lucerne. They died warring against
their fellow-men in defence of a bad government :
the dog battled with the giant forces of nature
in the service of humanity, and died after saving,
some say forty, others, seventy, lives of men and
women.

In the huge, dignified dog you have bene-
volence and heroism incarnate. His body is
itself a monument and embodiment of all that
is good in this world — beauty, courage, kind-
ness, abnegation, fidelity. Of how many of the
greatest heroes and sages could as much be
said ? Pertransiit Barry benefaciendo should be
the device on a monument to which all mankind
should subscribe in gratitude to their best and
most unselfish friend. It is true that if the
merits of our dogs were recorded, the fame of our
best men would be sadly dimmed in contrast.
The best with us is the commonplace with the dog.

lOO

The Dogs of St Bernard

It was not, unfortunately, given to Barry to
die on the field of honour, as has so often been
asserted. According to this legend he was
shot by a benighted traveller whom he was about
to rescue, and who mistook him for a wolf.
Barry escaped the honours of martyrdom, and
was alive at Berne as late as 1815. With him
the original St Bernard breed seems to have
expired.

The pass which has given its name to these
canine lords was itself named after a hol}^ man,
who dwelt there in the tenth century. This
Bernard was the son of a Savoyard baron,
Richard de Menthon, and is said, of course,
to have manifested the usual uncanny, saintly
characteristics in his earliest childhood. How-
ever, he could do something more than resist
temptation, and when the Saracens, who had
settled on the Riviera, penetrated the valley of
Aosta, he armed the people against them and
drove them far to the south. The infidels had,
unfortunately, destroyed the hospice which had
long existed on the head of the pass into the
Rhone valley. This Bernard rebuilt, and in that
dreary solitude — still the highest habitation but
one in Europe — he passed the rest of his pil-
grimage on earth.

The pass in those days was the most fre-
quented highway into Italy. Over it came pil-
grims from France and the Netherlands and even

lOI

Switzerland

distant Britain on their way to Rome and
Jerusalem. Every year you might hope to see
an archbishop, sometimes an emperor with a
splendid train of knights and men-at-arms.
The hospice rose in importance, and in the twelfth
century was entrusted to the Augustinians, or
Austin canons, as they were called in England.
Every passer-by left an offering — unlike the
modern traveller's, strictly proportionate to his
means — and the monastery grew wealthy and
powerful. Their riches could have benefited
the canons themselves but little in those chilly
solitudes, but doubtless flowed into the coffers
of the mother house at Martigny and other
foundations of the widespread order. Century
after century went by, but these good men kept
eternal watch on that high pass, ready to succour
the benighted wanderer and to guide the way-
farer into the plains below. At the end of the
eighteenth century travellers of a new kind
came across the pass and returned year after
year. Europe was up in arms, and the legions of
France and Austria poured over the mountains
in dark and turbulent streams. In May 1800
came Napoleon himself. ^^ With him the wealth
of the monastery seemed to depart. With the
opening of other passes, the traffic over the St
Bernard rapidly lessened. Fewer and fewer
travellers cross every year, and these few are
mostly poor Italian labourers. The occasional

102

The Dogs of St Bernard

tourists that swell their ranks are not remarkable
for their munificence, grudging the monks the
bare cost of their accommodation. Every year
the task of maintaining the hospice becomes
harder. Meanwhile such are the rigours of their
life that the monks can endure this stern service
only twelve or fifteen years. Then, worn out
and with shattered health, they are sent down
to the mother house of Martigny.

The dogs, who share their heroic labours, are
fabled to be descended from St Bernard's own
four-legged companion, who, to judge from the
picture in the refectory, was a bloodhound.
However, the St Bernard to this day has a good
many of the bloodhound's marks. Another
tradition has it that the parents of the race were
a native mastiff and a Danish bull bitch. What-
ever their progenitors may have been, persistent
in-breeding, with a special function in view,
produced in the long run a distinct species of
dog. The race seems to have continued pure
down to the days of Barry. In 1815, the winter
being of unusual severity, the females, contrary
to custom, were called on for service on the pass.
They nearly all perished, and it was suspected
that in-breeding had weakened the most valu-
able qualities of the tribe. At the beginning of
1830, therefore, the surviving dogs were paired
with long-haired Newfoundland bitches. The
results were not uniformly satisfactory. Many

103

Switzerland

of the dogs inherited the long hair of their
mothers, and were Hable to be weighed down
and buried by accumulations of snow. They
were sold, therefore, or given to benefactors of
the monastery, among others to M. Pourtales
of Muri, M. Rougement of Morat, and Colonel
Risold of Berne. These dogs were red, with
white marks, black face and neck, strongly built,
deep - chested, and taller than the living re-
presentatives of the breed. From them are
descended nearly all the St Bernards of this
country, into which, to the great contentment
of all true patriots, they were introduced in
the sixties. A St Bernard dog is said to
have been seen in England in the thirteenth
century, and another, looking more like a
mastiff, was brought from the hospice to Leasowe
Castle in the Waterloo year ; but neither of
these animals left any posterity recognised in
the stud-books.

It is the short-coated cousins of our British
dogs who do duty on the great St Bernard.
During the winter the canons send out patrols
in each direction, composed of two of their
number, or of their lay assistants, the sturdy
marronniers. These parties are each preceded
by two of the dogs, one of whom carries a little
keg of kirsch round his neck, the other a small,
tightly-rolled blanket. If they come upon a
fallen traveller, one of the two stays by him,

T04

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) •> : >

• * -t

-4

c
o

c
o
CQ

The Dogs of St Bernard

licking his face and hands, while the other goes
back to fetch his human assistants. It is the
special duty of these noble dogs to trace the
passes. The peculiar formation of the moun-
tains makes it impossible for the most ex-
perienced guides to do this, after a fresh fall of
snow, unassisted by canine sagacity and instinct.
There is a similar hospice on the Simplon,
served by the same community and the same
race of dogs. These creations of mediaeval
charity and brotherliness are rapidly becoming
obsolete, now that the Alps are pierced at so
many points with tunnels and the passes them-
selves are better managed and engineered. It
would be a pity if the splendid faculties of the
St Bernard dog were suffered to die out and
the enormous potentialities of the canine race
for love and service were again wasted. Man
tends to become more and more of a machine.
In a world composed of electricians, engineers,
biologists, vivisectors, water-works directors and
what not, we shall sadly miss the unselfish,
emotional, noble-hearted dog.

loS

THE GUIDES

Unlike the faithful hound immortaHsed by
Longfellow, the guide grows every day more in
demand, as the passion for mountain-climbing
becomes more general. It has always seemed
to me a fine calHng this, mastering the moun-
tains and braving the avalanche. The responsi-
bility of the guide is immense, his authority at
the moment of danger unquestioned. He also
is a mercenary, if you will, but his greatest glory
is to save life. The good guide emulates the
virtues of the St Bernard dog.

Even for those bom in the shadow of the
mountains, the training for this manly profession
is long and arduous. The earlier he makes up his
mind that he will follow it the better, for as a
boy he can practise clambering and climbing on
the lowest slopes of the hills round his village.
The Swiss schools will look after his physical
training. At the age of fifteen or sixteen he
runs errands for the guides, perhaps is able to
introduce them to clients. Presently he gets
taken on by one of these great men as a porter,
and joins the climbing parties. He may pass
five or six summers thus, all the while keeping

his eyes and ears well open and familiarising

io6

The Guides

himself with the mountain tracks and the
practice of his craft. In the winter he studies
EngHsh, perhaps some other language, and
spends as much time as he can with his masters.
At the age of twenty-three he presents him-
self at the Fiihrerkurs or " guides' course,"
which is held every two years at Sion in the
Valais, and at other centres. He must bring
with him a certificate of good character from the
head of his commune, and testimonials of his
fitness from well-known guides, extending over
at least three years. The course is conducted
by the Swiss Alpine Club, one of the instructors
being a medical man. The lectures deal with
the relations of guides and their employers,
the proper equipment of both, the geography
and natural history of the candidate's region,
the use of charts and instruments, and first-aid
to the injured. Each of these subjects occupies
a day, and four more days are devoted to test-
ing the abilities and fitness of the aspirants.
An adjoining peak is selected, and the party,
professors and students, ascend to the summit
and there pass the night. The next morning
at this breezy altitude a viva voce examina-
tion takes place, and the would-be guides are
questioned as to the paths they have taken,
their peculiar methods of dealing with obstacles,
their reasons for having taken this or that
course, the distances of adjoining mountains,

107

Switzerland

and of the villages below. This concluded, the
party descends by the most difficult route that
can be devised. The candidates are then sub-
jected to a week's military discipline, and at
the end of that time may hope to be presented
with the diploma of a fully qualified guide. At
Chamounix, before anyone can sit for examina-
tion he must be certified by a commissioned
guide to have made ten dangerous ascents,
including the complete tour of Mont Blanc.

Having thus superintended the education of
the guide, the Swiss Alpine Club never ceases
to watch over his welfare. Some years ago it
introduced a scheme, which may or may not
have become law, for the compulsory insurance
of guides. The club was prepared to pay five-
eighths of the premium, if the Government would
contribute another eighth ; so that a guide
could, for instance, by paying eight francs a
year, insure his life for 4000 francs. Those
acquainted with the psychology of the danger-
ous trades need not be told that there is
no great eagerness among these professional
mountaineers to avail themselves of these ad-
vantages, even at such a low rate.

It is not every guide that submits to this
long noviciate. In an interesting contribution
to The Traveller, ten years ago, Mrs Aubrey Le
Blond spoke of the unorthodox beginning of
Joseph Imboden, of St Nicholas. His father

108

The Guides

would not allow him to embrace this dangerous
calling, and apprenticed him to a shoemaker.
Having managed to save twenty francs, he left
his employer, at the age of sixteen, and took up
position outside the Riff el Hotel at Zermatt,
offering his services to every traveller as a
guide. As he had no certificate and no testi-
monials, no one would employ him. " At
last," he said, " my twenty francs were all but
spent when I managed to persuade a young
Englishman to let me take him up Monte Rosa.
I told him I knew the mountain well and would
not charge him high. So we started. I had
never set foot on a glacier before or on any
mountain, but there was a good track up the
snow, and I followed this, and there were other
parties on Monte Rosa, so I copied what they
did, and roped my gentleman as I saw the
guides doing theirs. It was a lovely day, and
we got on very well, and my gentleman was
much pleased and offered me an engagement to
go to Chamounix with him over higher passes.

" I said to him, ' Herr, until to-day I have
never climbed a mountain, but I am strong and
active, and I have lived among mountaineers
and mountains, and I am sure I can satisfy you
if you will take me.'

" He was quite ready to do so, and we crossed
the Col du Geant and went up Mont Blanc, but

could do no more as the weather was bad.

109

Switzerland

Then he wrote a great deal in my book, and
since then I have never been in want of a gentle-
man to guide."

Another amateur guide, less fortunate than
Imboden, saw no one to imitate when the time
came to rope his party together. He trusted to
luck, and put the rope round their necks, walking
between them himself as if he were leading them
to. execution. In this way they trudged for
many hours over mountain and glacier, without,
strangely enough, breaking their necks.

The canine virtues by which the Swiss have
redeemed less honourable occupations have
been exhibited to a heroic degree by the
Alpine guides. Their roll of honour would
reach from the top to the bottom of Mont
Blanc. There was old Jean Antoine Carrel, who
died of exhaustion after bringing his party in
safety through a terrific storm ; there was
Knabel, who threw himself over the side of an
ice arete to save the party who, one by one, had
been dragged by the fall of their companions
down the other side ; and Gentinette, whose
comrade had been killed before his eyes by a
falling stone precipitating the whole party into
a crevasse, and who, himself wounded, carried,
pulled, and pushed his half-conscious charge
up the steep ice slope into safety. "Never
return without your party " is a rule to which the
guides with very few exceptions have always

The Guides

lived up. Their skill and endurance have been
brought into service far from their own land.
It was Zurbriggen, a Swiss guide, who assisted
Sir Martin Conway to scale the Andes. Others
have exercised their craft in Norway, or the Cau-
casus, and the mighty Himalayas. Wherever
there is an apparently inaccessible mountain,
one of these quiet, unpretending Swiss peasants
will find a way to scale it.

Ill

AN OLD SWISS WATERING-PLACE

My earliest recollections of Baden in Aargau
are not agreeable. They may serve, however,
as a warning to my countrymen not to place
their trust in Swiss time-tables. Obsolete Brad-
shaws, ABC's and time-tables have, I am con-
vinced, wrecked more lives than our English
laws and the Goodwin Sands put together.

For a certain particular reason I wished to
be in Paris on Wednesday afternoon. Consulting
a time-sheet displayed at Bellinzona railway '
station, I ascertained that a train left Zurich
about half -past eight on the evening of Tuesday,
which would bring me to my destination about
six in the morning. I boarded the St Gotthard
express with a light heart, congratulating my-
self that I should have three hours in which to
dine and digest at Zurich before starting on
my long night journey. The day was fine. I
revelled in the sunshine of Switzerland after long
exposure to the rigours of an Itahan spring.
The climate of Italy, I long ago decided, is fitted
only for the manufacture of ice-creams. The
farther north we went the brighter the sun
shone. The run down towards the Lake of
Lucerne was as invigorating as a toboggan

112

o 9 » y

• . ■>:.«:»

An Old Swiss Watering-Place

slide. A hardy German even proposed to open
one of the windows, seeing there were about
forty passengers breathing the air of the same
car ; but his hardihood was indignantly checked
by his fellow-countrymen. Presently a man
came and sat down beside me. I thought he
did so because I had taken the precaution of
sitting opposite an exceedingly pretty girl from
Lugano. But it seemed that he knew me.
He was one of a jovial band of commercial
travellers whom I had met in the train between
Brescia and Milan. Though an Italian, he lived
at Winterthur, and thither he was now re-
turning. He had to change trains at Zurich.
I expressed myself, in Pickwickian French, as
happy in the prospect of his company. In
reality, I cursed him for putting an end to all
chance of a conversation with the pretty girl.
I told him I was going on that night to Paris.
He said I would have to hurry, as the last train
was timed to depart a few minutes after our
arrival. I assured him he was wrong. He said
he had never heard of the eight-o'clock train,
but made no doubt that I was right. By the
time we got to Ziirich I was quite fond of the
man. He said he had half a mind to pass the
night there, but on issuing from the station we
found the streets swarming with people and the
hotels besieged. At a turning we were con-
fronted by a group of fellows in the costume

H H3

Switzerland

of the fourteenth century. There was a great
carnival in full swing. Zurich was celebrating
some historic event and the turnvereine had
assembled. Not a seat was to be had in bier-
halle, restaurant, or bun-shop. The Italian
was dismayed. " No chance of a bed here to-
night ! " he muttered ', " 1 must go on at once
to Winterthur." And he incontinently fled. I,
on the contrary, was delighted that I had come
at so opportune a moment. Never could I have
seen the city so gay, so animated. It was
brimming and frothing with the old mediaeval
German jollity. As to dinner, I could have it
on the train. In the meantime it was amusing
to watch the desperation of the visitors turned
away from one hotel after another.

I strolled, tired, but airily, on to the vast
departure platform, and inquired from which
platform the "eight — et cetera" for Paris
might be expected to leave. The porter stared
at me in surprise and contempt. " There is no
such train," he informed me coldly; " the last
train for Paris left two hours ago. There is no
other till to-morrow morning."

The time-sheet at Bellinzona gave the winter
service, to delude homeless foreigners and keep
them in Switzerland in the interests of the hotel
proprietors.

I resigned myself to the inevitable. No
matter, I would pass the night in Zurich. But

114

An Old Swiss Watering-Place

now the animation" of the town, the plight of
the merrymakers, assumed a new and terrible
significance. The horror of my situation dawned
upon me. I could not get away from the town,
but perhaps I could not stay in it either. A
frantic search, extending over three hours, satis-
fied me that shelter in Zurich was not to be had
that night for love or money. The fatal word
" Besetzt " bade fair to be engraved on my
brain. I returned to the station. I approached
the same porter. " I must get out of this town,"
I told him ; " this is no place for me. Is there
a train going anywhere in the direction of Paris
to-night ? " He replied with a scornful ex-
pression which I cannot explain that I could go
as far as Often. When I boarded the train I
found that fifty or so persons in the same plight
as I had also hit on the same expedient. They
also were going to Olten. I artfully got out
at a place named Baden. To my disgust, a
dozen of these wretches followed me. Near the
station the friendly light of an inn shone on us
through open doors. We all broke into a run.
I led. Within a stride of the threshold I fell
prone over my gladstone bag. The field swept
by with a rush. I picked myself up only to
learn that my fall had lost me the only remain-
ing vacancy on the roof of the dog's kennel.

Seizing my bag with something between a sob
and a curse, I charged down the next street.

Switzerland

Everybody had gone to bed. It began to rain.
As there seemed to be no poHcemen about, I
resolved to encamp for the night on a doorstep.
At that moment a wayfarer hove in sight. I
was glad to perceive that he was drunk. A
drunken man would be more likely than any-
body to know all the inns of a town. I accosted
him, and he was sober enough to appreciate my
predicament. With the kindliness born of good
beer, he gripped one of the handles of my bag,
and led me, staggering, to the door of an inn
with the appropriate sign of " The Angel." He
thundered at the door, hiccoughed good-night,
and vanished. I became conscious of three dark
forms surrounding me. These mean wretches
had tracked me from the station, and were now
ready to snatch the very blankets from beneath
me. The door opened, and I fell on to the mat.
The porter harangued me in the patois of the
canton Aargau, which I did not understand. I
brushed him aside and walked upstairs. Talking
the most horrid gibberish, he showed all four of us
into a room with three beds. I placed my bag
on one, and began to undress. In the row that
followed I took no part or interest. I rather
gathered that one of the three had ordered the
room in advance, and would not share it with
the others. The porter, I suppose, concluded
from my resolute bearing that it was I who had
bespoken the room. In the long run two of the

ii6

An Old Swiss Watering-Place

travellers departed in dudgeon, to sleep in the
rain, I conjecture, and one of the other beds
was immediately occupied by a Swiss farmer,
who slept in his clothes with a bowler hat set
firmly on his head.

This experience was somewhat more thrilling
than it may seem in the narration, and has
enabled me at all events to applaud the prudence
of those ladies who keep trains waiting till they
have received the personal assurance of every
official on the platform and of the more respect-
able passengers that it does not go anywhere
near their destination. Man is too proud to
ask about trains — he consults the time-table ;
woman, on the contrary, scans her Bradshaw with
obvious misgivings and goes off to get his in-
formation confirmed by the bookstall boy or the
cloakroom attendant.

In this unexpected manner I found myself in
the Swiss Baden, a place which I had never
thought or wished to visit. I knew vaguely
that it had been the scene of many important
events in the history of Switzerland, and that it
was once the usual meeting-place of the federal
assemblies. It was selected for this honour, I
imagine, in order that the austere delegates
might refresh themselves with the waters and
relax their sobriety in the gaieties for which the
place was world-famous. For Baden is the
Bath or Tunbridge Wells of Switzerland, and

Switzerland

as such was resorted to by those inveterate

hoHday-makers, the Romans. In the Middle

Ages it was the most fashionable and frequented

spa in Europe. Indeed it seems to have been

a pleasant enough spot, with manners very

different from those common to most mediaeval

communities. Through Baden Poggio Braccio-

lini passed in 1416, and so delighted was he with

the place that straightway he sat down and wrote

to his friend Niccolo Niccoli a long, vivacious

account of the customs of its inhabitants and

habitues. " The ancients," he wrote, " used to

boast of the baths of Puteoli, whose attractions

drew the Romans in swarms, but I do not

think they can come near Baden for pleasure,

nor can they stand comparison in any way.

For the great charm of Puteoli lay rather in its

soft climate and splendid buildings than in the

gaiety of the life of the bathers. But here we

owe nothing to the scenery, and everything else

is framed for pleasure ; so that very often I

think that Venus has come hither from C5^prus,

bringing in her train joys from every corner of

the world. And visitors to these waters, though

they have never read the fantastic tales of

Heliogabalus, obey so faithfully the goddess'

pleasant commands, so exactly reproduce her

tender whims, that though nature is their only

teacher they are all masters — and mistresses —

of the arts of love. ..."

118

An Old Swiss Watering-Place

" The wealthy town of Baden . . . lies within a
circle of mountains, near a wide and swiftly-flowing
river that falls into the Rhine six miles from the
town. About half-a-mile away on the river bank
is a very handsome group of villas, built for
the use of bathers. A fine square occupies the
centre, and all round about are splendid inns
to accommodate the crowd of visitors.

" Each house has its own private baths for the
use of the inmates only, and baths both public
and private number about thirty. Only two,
however, are public and open to view. These
are the bathing places of the lower orders, and
hither flock indiscriminately women and men,
boys and girls, the two sexes separated only by
a railing. . . .

" But in the private houses, bathing is more
decent. The two sexes are separated by a
partition ; but this is pierced by tiny windows
which allow the men and women bathers to take
refreshments together, to talk to and caress
each other in their accustomed manner. Above
the baths is a kind of gallery in which people
assemble to watch and talk to the bathers. For
everyone is allowed to come and go as he pleases,
to chatter and joke with those in the water. The
women, as they go in and out of the water, make
a liberal display of their figures ; there are no
doors nor attendants but no one thinks any evil.
In many places the baths have but one entrance

119

Switzerland

for men and women, and amusing encounters
often occur between the sexes, both most hghtly
clad. The men wear bathing drawers, the women
thin smocks of Hnen, slashed at the sides, so that
they hide neither the neck, the breast nor arms."
Poggio goes on to say how the women give
al fresco entertainments in the baths, to which
the men are bidden as guests. Himself and his
companions were invited sometimes to these
watery feasts. The Italian, however, ungallantly
refused, not, he hastens to assure us, from
modesty, " which is considered boorish and ill-
bred," but because of his ignorance of the
language. He felt he would appear foolish to
the syrens of the baths unless he could engage
them in badinage and compliment. But two
of his companions, less sensitive, ventured in,
and Poggio seems torn between contempt for
the poor figure they cut and envy of the kind-
ness with which their hostesses received them.
For his part the chronicler retired to the gallery
to look on, and thickened the air with exclama-
tion marks. The ways of the Baden husbands
were beyond his comprehension. They seemed
not to regard their wives as personal property !
They trusted them freely, half-clad, in the com-
pany of strange men ! ' ' Permirum est videre
quanta simplicitate vivant ! " What simple-minded
fools they must be to imagine their wives would
not deceive them if they had a chance !

I20

An Old Swiss Watering-Place

Life passes gaily in the water into which the
visitors plunge some three or four times a day.
There is dancing, wine and song and playing on
the harp. "It is a pleasing sight to see the
young girls ripe for love and wedlock, splendid
in physique, clad like goddesses, tuning up their
strings. Their scanty draperies spread out and
float on the water. You would think them
second Venuses ! "

These mermaidens have a pretty custom of
begging gifts from the spectators, who " shower
down small coins on the most beautiful, which
they catch partly in their hands, and partly they
hold out their garments to receive, falling over
each other in the scramble, often discovering
secrets the most carefully hidden. And garlands
of many-coloured flowers are thrown down to
them which while still in the water they twist
round their hair. . . . The mere wishing to be
sober would be the height of folly."

But regretfully does Bracciolini feel that the
height of pleasure is denied him, since he cannot
speak to the goddesses. There only remains for
him to feast his eyes on the spectacle, to make
the girls scramble for flowers and coins, to accom-
pany them to and from the baths. Perhaps he
would have had a better time had be been less
faint-hearted.

After supper the merrymakers of Baden con-
tinue their revels on dry land. There is a large

121

Switzerland

tree-shaded meadow near the river, where the
visitors while away the evening with dancing,
singing and tossing a ball, filled with little
bells, which all the others try to catch. " I
think," says the envious Poggio, " that this
must be the place where the first man was
created, which the Hebrews call Gamedon, which
means ' garden of pleasure.' For if pleasure
can make life blessed, I do not see what this
place lacks of perfection and of the completest
happiness."

Even in Poggio's day the value of the waters
of Baden in overcoming sterility were recognised,
and crowds of women flocked thither with that
end in view. But the gay life attracted even
more of all ranks and both sexes from every corner
of the world. " Lovers and their mistresses,
and all the butterflies of Ufe crowd to the place
to enjoy the pleasures they desire. Many feign
sickness of the body, whose only malady is of
the imagination. You will see many beautiful
women, without husbands or relatives, with two
maids and one serving-man, or some ancient
cousin or chaperon whom it is easier to deceive
than to entertain. And most of them arrive in
garments heavy with gold and silver, and decked
out with jewels ; so that you would imagine them
to have come for some splendid wedding rather
than to a watering-place.

Hither also come vestal virgins, or to speak

122

An Old Swiss Watering-Place

more truly virgin priestesses of Flora. Hither
come abbots, monks, friars and priests who live
with more licence than the other visitors : when
they bathe at the same time as the women, they
throw aside all their religion, and twist their hair
with silken ribbons. It is the one object of all
to flee from sadness, to pursue happiness, to
think of nothing but how to live joyously, and
to drink the cup of pleasure to +he dregs. They
do not bother about dividing up the common
stock of happiness, but seek to lavish on all what
is individual."

And so the light-hearted mediaeval crowd
passes before our eyes, their joyous hedonism in
happy contrast to the repression and asceticism
that passed — and still passes — for virtue. " It
is wonderful," exclaims the astonished Italian
traveller, " how in so great a throng of nearly a
thousand men, of manners the most diverse, no
quarrels arise, no discords, no brawls nor disagree-
ments. Husbands see their wives caressed, see
them alone with strangers, and are in no wise
troubled or amazed. AU this seems natural
to their .affectionate minds. And so jealousy,
which torments most husbands, has no place
whatever among them. Its name is neither
known nor heard. . . .

" Easily contented these people live from day
to day, turning each day into a festival, without
seeking after great riches; what wealth they have,

123

Switzerland

they enjoy, fearing nothing for the future. If
misfortune comes to them, they bear it bravely.
They have a motto which makes them wealthy :
' He alone has lived, who has lived joyously.' "

And so regretfully Poggio Bracciolini passes
on his journey to less idyllic spots.

Some time within the succeeding century
the frequenters of this Swiss Eden must have
eaten of the forbidden fruit. My lord of
Montaigne, who visited the place in 1580, assures
us that " ladies who are fain to take their bath
with daintiness and decency can repair to Baden
with confidence, for they will be alone in the
bath, which is like an elegant cabinet, light with
glazed windows, painted panelling, and clean
flooring. Everywhere are chairs and small
tables for reading or gaming while in the bath.
The bather may empty and fill the bath as often
as he likes, and will find a chamber adjoining.
These baths are placed high in a valley com-
manded by the slopes of high mountains, which
nevertheless are fertile and well cultivated. The
water when drunk tastes rather flat and soft,
like water heated up, and there is a smell of
sulphur about it, and a certain prickling flavour
of salt. Amongst the people of the place it is
chiefly used in the bath, in which they subject
themselves also to cupping and bleeding, so
that I have at times seen the water in the two
public baths the colour of blood. Those who

124

An Old Swiss Watering-Place

drink it by habit take a glass or two at the most.
The guests as a rule stay six or seven weeks, and
some or other frequent the baths all through
the summer. No country sends so many visitors
as Germany, whence come great crowds." M. de
Montaigne speaks highly of the accommodation
provided for these guests. " The lodgment is
magnificent. In the house where we stayed
three hundred mouths had to be fed every day ;
and while we were there, beds were made for
one hundred and seventy sojourners. It pos-
sessed seventeen stoves and eleven kitchens,
and in the house adjoining were fifty furnished
chambers, the walls of all the rooms being hung
with the coats-of-arms of all the gentry who had
lodged therein."

The itinerant philosopher mentions that there
are uncovered public baths, frequented by poor
folk. Though catering for all tastes, among
others for these of " ladies of daintiness and
decency," Baden still persisted in the path of
primitive innocence and made a feature of
mixed bathing. This was a matter of much
wonder and amusement to that delightful old
traveller, Thomas Coryate, the Odcombian leg-
stretcher, who took the waters here in August
1608. He remarks, like Poggio, on the extreme
complaisancy of the husbands who looked on
at their wives " not only talking and familiarly
discoursing with other men, but also sporting

125

Switzerland

after a very pleasant and merry manner. For
the verie name of jelousie is odious in this place."
Mr Coryate adds that notwithstanding he would
never get accustomed to that sort of thing were
he a married man ! "At this time of the year,"
he informs us, " many wooers come thither to
solace themselves with their beautiful mistresses.
Many of these young ladies had the hair of their
head very curiously plaited in locks, and they
wore certaine pretty garlands upon their heads
made of fragrant and odoriferous flowers. A
spectacle exceeding amorous."

There is no such spectacle at the present day
to lure the traveller from the town of Baden
to the baths, which, I was informed, lay about
a mile away. Everything there is conducted
nowadays with that regard for the proprieties
which is the glory of the Swiss nation. The
thought of what used to go on there would
cause the present frequenters to blush like the
Jungfrau at sundown. The place, though now
so demure and sedate, is still extensively patron-
ised by the Swiss themselves and occasional
French and Germans. There is a kursaal ; and
a kur tax, which is not very onerous as it is
payable by the day and ranges from two to six
pence a head according to the rank of the
visitor's hotel.

126

LUCERNE, TO-DAY AND LONG AGO

Lucerne and Geneva, the two great strongholds
of Switzerland's rival creeds, have been cap-
tured by the world, if not by its traditional
allies, and are the gayest and most frivolous of
Swiss cities. The Catholic capital had never
assumed the virtuous airs of the Protestant
Rome, and has therefore lost less of its original
character in accepting its later destiny. Lucerne
remains Catholic while she welcomes the Gentile,
the Jew, and the heretic with open arms.
She cherishes old traditions, while she turns a
smiling face to the world — a white fa9ade of
gorgeous modern hotels with a kursaal, the very
rendezvous of fashion and levity, prominent
among them. Truly there is nothing austere
or forbidding about this little city set on the
shore of its green lake, embosomed in yet
greener hills, and flanked by tall white-capped
mountains. Lucerne is used to strangers. Her
importance rose and fell with the rate of traffic
over the St Gotthard, and to-day she is the
vortex of the tourist whirl, the centre of the
foreigner industry.

In winter no deader spot can well be imagined
than this. The hotels are shuttered, all the

127

Switzerland

shops near them closed. The Hon sculptured
in the rock — Lucerne's chief monument — ^is
carefully packed up behind sacking and canvas.
Ice blocks float in the dark green river, a mist
veils all the mountains. In the streets you
meet very few people, and these are the sombrest
figures. The men are cloaked and hooded,
the women seem to be wearing all their frocks
and petticoats at one time, with the dullest,
drabbest outermost. Dante would be baffled
to describe a gloom so Cimmerian. It is a kind
of Eskimo's hell. You hurry to the railway
station to inquire the next train to anywhere
else.

But in summer the town is gleaming white
and dazzlingly sunny, and uncommonly stuffy
at times. The tourist is in full possession. He
and she are of all possible varieties. Juno-like
Viennese ladies swim through bevies of charming
but dumpy Parisiennes, graceful but immature
Englishwomen, smart but crude American girls.
You are brushed aside by a very assertive
couple from the Fatherland — a bulky dame in a
drab ulster with a peaked cap set on her flaxen
curls, accompanied by a fat man breaking out
of a light frock-coat suit, with which he has the
effrontery to wear a bowler hat. This interest-
ing couple are usually followed by one or more
backfisch — gawky damsels of fifteen or sixteen
summers, very bony, and with little promise

128

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■ • > •

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) ■» • » 1

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o
o

(A
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Lucerne, To-Day and Long Ago

as yet of bulking like mamma, but probably
wearing spectacles like papa. These odd and
rather unkindly treated types we are pleased
to take as representative of their great nation,
just as the French still cling to Caran d' Ache's
caricature of us Britons. As likely as not, the
lilylike woman, exquisitely gowned, who passed
just now, escorted by a man of the Lewis Waller
type, are Germans also. The specimens we
have met most often form our conception of a
national type. The German who had spent
his stay in England in one of his Majesty's
prisons would have as correct an impression
of English people as most travellers with their
limited experience obtain. We have some un-
prepossessing representatives at Lucerne in the
shape of the cheapest trippers. I understand
that benevolent agencies will give you a week in
" Lovely Lucerne " and bring you back again for
four and a half guineas — not much more than
'Arry would spend in twice the time at Margate.
And 'Arry often avails himself of these facilities.
He is housed generally at chalets and pensions
well outside the town, but he strolls into it,
with a cricket cap on his head, a " quiff " or curl
over his low forehead, a low collar displaying his
manly neck, a quiet tweed suit, and very yellow
boots. He has a habit of straying into the
most expensive tea-shops — even occasionally
restaurants — and setting the whole place in an
I 129

Switzerland

uproar when his bill is presented. He is firmly
persuaded that he is being swindled whenever
he is asked to pay for anything. He is always
inquiring for English steak and for " Guinness "
and " small Bass," though he knew quite well
before he started that he would not be able to
obtain them. He generally buys a great
quantity of Swiss cigars, and induces his com-
panions to do the same. Englishmen of all
ranks, it must be admitted, talk as much about
tobacco as the Italians do about food and
Englishwomen about dress. The English cheap
tripper, then, is not a very dignified or pleasing
type, but he is immeasurably superior to the
corresponding type of any other nationality.
He can eat his food without disgusting his
neighbours, he is well washed and clear skinned,
and has a certain pride in his appearance and
self-respect. I admit that the low-class English-
man can be a vulgar brute enough, and that in
no country in the world do women stare more
insolently and insult each other by stage whispers
more outrageously than in England ; but for
sheer unadulterated brutish vulgarity the low-
class Parisian and Berlin 'Arry can easily bear
away the palm from the Cockney.

Herded with these vulgarians are often
noticed trippers of a very different stamp.
Lucerne, like the Normandy coast, is specially
attractive to people whose travel-hunger is out

130

Lucerne, To-Day and Long Ago

of all proportion to their means. There are
earnest young men from the English midlands,
insatiably curious for foreign sights and scenes,
and* pathetically anxious to make their money
go literally as far as third-class trains will take
it. There are governesses and elderly unmarried
women, too, whose sole glimpse of life and
reality consists in these annual trips abroad.
These are the correspondents who harass " the
travel editors " of our illustrated journals with
inquiries after pensions at three to four francs a
day and as to the possibility of travelling across
Spain or Hungary third-class. They advertise
in the same columns for companions of similarly
ambitious and inexpensive tastes. Some of
these " Constant Readers " and " Poor Gentle-
women " do not seem to care where they go,
so long as it is " on the Continent." And the
patient travel editor, realising this, will recom-
mend them to a " nice, extremely moderate
place, very quiet " such as Morges or Isleten
or Bourgy-les-Epinards, which he is " sure they
would like," with " an English Church service,"
where they can live in a respectable pension
for ladies only at fifteen francs a week. Not a
very enjoyable holiday, one would think ; but
to some of these quiet gentlefolk it means an
adventure and brings a spice of romance into
withered, arid Hves.

Travel or residence abroad under such con-

131

Switzerland

ditions is, of course, quite a different thing from
being "in a fix " or " getting landed," an ex-
perience which most globe-trotters rather enjoy.
In what the Germans would call my " wander-
years," I found myself at Coblenz with about
five shillings more than my fare to a town in
France where I wanted to go or to a place in
England where I didn't. About three of these
shillings I spent on a reply-paid telegram to my
French friends, asking them to telegraph at
once if I could come or not. The reply was to
be addressed to me at the post-ofhce. I was
told by the clerk I might expect it within an
hour. It did not come in an hour, or two hours.
I began to get anxious and even more hungry.
I invested a mark in luncheon, walked about
the Gobenplatz and the Rheinanlagen, and
called at the post-office every half-hour. No
reply came by the time the office closed. I had
now one mark to spare. I spent it on a bed.
My reply, " Venez de suite," was awaiting mef
at the office next morning. On consulting the
fare-table at the station I found I had, after all,
two marks and a few pfennig more than the
price of a third-class ticket. But I had to live
during nearly twenty-four hours ! I solved the
problem by ir3.ve\lmg fourth-class to the German
frontier and by living on dry biscuits and water
throughout that long, hot journey.

I am quite sure that many of the strangers

132

Lucerne, To-Day and Long Ago

one sees at Lucerne have never been in
such straits. MingUng with the economically-
' disposed tourists I have mentioned are those
splendid and opulent persons who have succeeded
the travelling milords of the post-and-courier
days, and seem to spend all their lives in motor
cars and first-class hotels. Before the motor
was invented these people must have lived in
the hotels and sleeping-cars instead, for no one
ever met them walking or driving. Their views
of the country even now must be mainly de-
rived from the windows of such caravanserais
as the National and the Axenstein. They think
in terms of hotels rather than towns, and never
stay long anywhere, except at Nice or Monte
Carlo. While every English person wants to
be like them, the Swiss hotel proprietors and
chefs, who see so much of them and are on such
familiar terms with them, have no such ambition.
The Swiss want to be rich, not elegant or smart.
Perhaps, also, this is because society outside
the Anglo-Saxon world is divided vertically, not
horizontally. A man rises within his own
section, along his own ladder of life — from a
humble hotel servant he rises to be a big hotel
proprietor, just as the little artist aspires to
the rank of a great artist. Each aims at
eminence in his own calling. With us it is
different. Men of all professions aim at the
same goal, and none thinks himself successful

133

Switzerland

till he is received, not by the heads of his own
profession, but by the governing, supreme set,
Society with the large S. In Switzerland every
bear climbs his own pole.

At Lucerne the kursaal is a common meeting-
place for all sorts of visitors, of all nationali-
ties. The five-guinea trippers come there, with
their caps crammed in their pockets, to risk a
five-franc piece on the chance of the spinning
pea, and feel that they are gamblers indeed.
They rub shoulders with enormous Hebrews in
" smokings," as the French call dinner-jackets,
and with their beshawled, white-shouldered
womenfolk. Casinos and gambling places re-
semble each other very much all the world over,
but here you soon perceive that the gamesters
are not in earnest and that no one is likely, in
consequence of big losses, to pitch himself into
the lake just outside. From the windows of the
big hotels often proceeds a sound of revelry
by night ; the foreigners are dancing even in
Lucerne, which used to frown on such dangerous
frivolity and limited it to three or four days in
the year.

The strains of the " Merry Widow " penetrate
even the cloisters of the mother church of the
canton, dedicated to the patron saint of sports-
men, St Leger, or St Leodegar, a name from
which philologists, in a way known only to
themselves, derive that of the town. The

134

Lucerne, To-Day and Long Ago

church keeps abreast of the times and has organ
recitals every evening, which you pay a franc
to hear. The building dates only from the
sixteenth century — the towers are so old — but
as a foundation dates from 750, when a monastery
of Benedictines was established here. This was
the beginning of Lucerne. A small fishing
village sprang up, which in 1291 was sold, with
other Swiss fiefs, by the abbot Berchtold to the
house of Hapsburg. This change of masters led
to the formation of the league between the
forest cantons, which Lucerne herself was slow
to join. Indeed, her men attacked Unterwalden
when the men of that canton were helping their
confederates at Morgarten. In 1332, however,
the town joined the league, and won a recogni-
tion of partial independence from her overlord.
Some of the citizens still hankered after the
Austrian yoke. In 1343 they met to betray
their native town, in a vault under the Tailors'
Gildhouse. A boy chanced to penetrate into
the cellar. " Hearing the sound of muttering,"
writes Etterlin, the old chronicler, " and the
clashing of arms, he was afraid and thought the
place haunted, and turned to flee ; but some men
gave chase, and held him fast. They threatened
his life, that he should tell no man what he had
seen. He promised and went with them. And
thus he heard their deliberations. And when
no one more gave heed unto him, he quietly

135

Switzerland

crept from thence, went up the steps by the
house of the tailors into the street, and looked
about if he might see a light. This he saw in
the Guild room of the butchers, where the men
were wont to sit up later than in other rooms.
He went in, and saw many men drinking and
playing. Here he sat him down behind the
stove, and began to say : ' Oh ! stove, stove ! '
But no one gave heed unto him. Then cried
he again : ' Oh ! stove, stove ! May I speak ? '
The men now became aware of his presence,
mocked him and thought him mad, and asked
him who he was and what he wanted. ' Oh !
nothing, nothing,' was his answer. Then began
he a third time and said : ' Oh ! stove, stove ! I
must make my complaint to thee, since I may
speak to no man — to-night there are men
gathered under the great vault at the corner, who
are going to commit murder.' As soon as the
men heard that, they ran out in great haste, gave
the alarm, made prisoners of the conspirators,
and forced them to swear fealty."

Lucerne soon became impatient even of
Austria's merely nominal claims upon her allegi-
ance. In 1386 Duke Leopold advanced with a
mighty army to chastise his rebellious vassals.
The confederates rallied in defence of their ally,
and on 9th July defeated and killed the Duke
on the little plateau above Sempach. With
the banners and spoils taken on that memorable

136

Lucerne, To-Day and Long Ago

day the Lucerners were able to decorate their
town for many a long year after. Entlibuch,
Kriens, and Horw were brought under their
rule, and within the next hundred years the
canton had acquired its present dimensions.

The old town to-day lies close against the
swirling Reuss, and with its picturesque old
houses, painted and gabled, probably does not
greatly differ in aspect from its fifteenth or
sixteenth century self. The first house of stone
in Lucerne was built in 1398, and thereafter
building a stone house was, says Mr Sowerby,^
often made a condition of admission to citizen-
ship. " The houses being at first entirely of
wood, the regulations to prevent fires were very
strict. No wood, whether for building or burn-
ing, was to remain more than one night in the
street. Between vespers and early mass, no
smith's work was allowed, no threshing or
winnowing, no working with tow or melted
tallow, and no juniper wood or small twigs might
be burned. The fire brigade was composed
of citizens, who in case of a fire had to remain
until dismissed by the mayor [schultheiss] ; the
women had to stand at the doors of their houses
with lights ; the members of the Klein and Gross
Rath, armed with axes, formed a guard. The
gates were closed every night at curfew, and the
streets patrolled by one member of the Klein
^ " The Forest Cantons."
137

Switzerland

Rath, two of the Gross Rath, three citizens, and
a sergeant [weibel]. Not until 1764, at the
instance of Valentin Meyer, the town council
employed a paid watch and guard of 150 men,
and the members of the council could sleep
undisturbed."

Against human foes the town was protected
on the land side by the wall with nine towers,
which still remains. The wall dates from 1385,
but the Zeitthurm or Clock Tower is believed
to be a hundred years older and to have been
erected on the site of the little castle of Tannen-
berg. Only thirty marks silver were paid in
compensation for the demolition of this strong-
hold. There was another " castle " where the
Nollithurm now stands, and there the Abbot of
Marbach, the superior of the prior of Lucerne,
was received with befitting ceremony by his
vassals. The Musegg hill, on which these towers
stand, is the scene, every 25th of March, of the
procession called the Romfahrt, instituted about
1250. It took the place of an annual pilgrimage
to Rome, to return thanks for the deliverance
of the town from a fire. " The procession has
only twice failed to take place on the appointed
day. In 1653 it was deferred until July 25th
on account of the peasant war, and in 1785, on
account of the deep snow, it was put off till
March 27th, and then only took place in the
town. The priest who delivered the sermon

138

I Lucerne, To-Day and Long Ago

in 1553 was Domitas Hurilaeus, Archbishop of
Cashel, who was afterwards murdered."
The Swiss are and always have been as fond

' of hoHdays and pubhc ceremonies as the modern
EngHsh. On the Wednesday and Thursday

' after Easter a miracle play was enacted every
five years in the Wine Market, where Lux's
pretty fountain now stands. The stage was
provided by the municipahty, which entertained
all visitors at its own expense. This lavish
hospitahty proved so costly that the play was
given up early in the seventeenth century.
There was, however, always plenty of money in
Lucerne. The famous Ludwig Pfyffer, who took
part in the French religious wars, was worth
three quarters of a million of our money and
was nicknamed the Swiss King. The gilds were
very wealthy, and upon their extinction in 1870
were able to distribute considerable sums among
their members. These corporations often in-
cluded several district trades. The Safran Gild
was composed of crafts as diverse as sculptors
and ropemakers, and was named after one of
its members who had distinguished himself in
the Burgundian wars. In his honour the gild
organised a procession on the last Thursday of
carnival known as the " Fritschi-auszug," which
was at one time a march past of all the able-
bodied men of the town.

Life seems to have been jolly enough in the

139

Switzerland

quaint old town, though from time to time the
city fathers, as elsewhere in these days, exerted
themselves to make everybody solemn and
glum. The wealthy Pfyffers, many of whom
had served in the French Guards, did much to
make things lively ; so also did the few Italian
families settled in the town. The council passed
stupid laws against card-playing, regulating
dress, and so forth, but no one dared to enforce
these against the aristocratic families. The
townsmen's daughters, however, were limited to
two or three dances a year, and forced to carry
on their flirtations as best they could in the
shadow of the covered-in bridges.

The oldest of these was the Hofbriicke, which
existed in one form or another since 853, and
was demolished in 1857. It was over thirteen
hundred feet in length and extended from the
southern end of the modern Seebriicke to a point
now some distance inland from the lake. It
was decorated, like the remaining bridges of the
period, with paintings, in this case from sacred
history, bearing the names of the donors or
restorers. Upon it was a chapel built by the
famous Swiss King. His arms were subse-
quently removed from the structure, when his
heirs had refused to bear the cost of restoration.
This bridge was the favourite promenade of the
Lucerners, and must have closely resembled
the two existing wooden bridges which span the

140

« e c c f c f

c c c

c t c c

re c «

c "^ e c c'

c c e c c t c

Lucerne, To-Day and Long Ago

river lower down. The Kapellbriicke forms a
very obtuse angle, pointing towards the lake.
It dates from 1355, and was decorated at the
beginning of the seventeenth century with about
two hundred pictures illustrative of Swiss history.
Each member of the council undertook the cost
of one painting, and was careful to establish his
connection with it as far as possible. Thus,
as Mr Sowerby explains, John H. Pfyffer
chose for the subject of his picture the gym-
nasium founded by his ancestor; L. von Wyl,
the Mordnacht or massacre resulting from the
conspiracy of 1343, because it was supposed to
have taken place near his house. One of these
compositions represents the execution of two
Christian martyrs near Soleure by means of an
instrument resembling the guillotine. Some of
these paintings have been placed in the galleries
of the old Wasserthurm, at the angle of the
bridge, the lighthouse from which, according
to some, the town derived its name, and which
now houses the municipal archives.

This bridge must have been, from the nature of
its decoration, a more agreeable lounging place
than the Spreuerbriicke, lower down, which was
rebuilt in 1566. In whichever direction you
traverse this bridge your eyes are met by one
of the pieces composing the famous " Dance of
Death," placed back to back in the angle formed
by the pitched wooden roof. These ghastly

141

Switzerland

pictures were painted, for the edification of the
inhabitants, by Caspar MegHnger in 1626, at
the expense of various pious townsmen, and
were restored by one, Hunkeler, in 1727. One
represents a wedding feast; Death, personified
as a hideous skeleton in the costume of the
artist's period, is waiting with his scythe to cut
down the bride at the entrance to the nuptial
chamber. In another, the same grinning spectre
appears behind the cradle of a smiling infant.
Farther on, you see a knight galloping away
from a stricken field, unaware that Death is
seated behind him on his saddle. Elsewhere
the skeleton is seen driving a holiday party ;
you see him arraying a lady for a ball, serving
at table, appearing, in short, in almost every
conceivable situation in everyday human life,
conducting popes, emperors, kings, nobles, mer-
chants, peasants, old men, young men, wives,
and virgins, in one fantastic capering cotillon
to the grave.

The series is well known to students of
mediaeval art. It reappears all over northern
Europe and was painted at Bale by Holbein.
" In the midst of life we are in death " was a
theme on which the mediaeval mind never tired
of gloating. The pagans saw the grandeur and
sadness of death, the Christians only its horror
and corruption. The Church, which never

ceased to insist on the baseness of the body,

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Lucerne, To-Day and Long Ago

found an excellent ally in the skeleton with the
scythe. It pleased the miserable monk, starving
in his filthy rags, to reflect that the proud
knight and the lovely lady would one day be
the prey of worms. The vilest of the human
species delighted in the certainty that the
noblest would one day be a festering mass of
corruption. Roman Catholic books of devotion
are full of the sentiment ; it inspires, for that
matter, half the hymns of all the Christian
churches. Flesh is vile ; human nature is evil ;
woman must be cleansed by canonical processes
from the guilt of motherhood ; all humanity must
end in the mouldering corpse. How different
from the bright saying of the Mohammedans :
" There is nothing the wise man thinks of less
than death ! "

The " bance of Death " here represented was
at its conception performed by living actors. It
formed one of the mystery plays of the devout
mumbling Middle Ages, and in 1424 was " pro-
duced " at Paris in an appropriate theatre —
the cemetery of the Innocents. At the time of
the English occupation, when Francois Villon
saw the world as a vast thieves' kitchen, and
wolves, four-legged as well as human , preyed
on the citizens, a procession defiled through
the streets headed by a skeleton seated on a
jewelled throne. Something of this morbid
humour has survived in the so-called gay city

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Switzerland

to this day, as visitors to the tourist-ridden
haunts of Montmartre well know. It is still
considered good fun in some Italian carnivals
to masquerade as a corpse ; but humanity at
last recoiled from mimicking the triumph of
its implacable foe, and the edifying pageant
was presented only by the painter and the
carver.

I sat on that quaint old bridge at Lucerne
and extracted some amusement from the gro-
tesque pictures expressly designed to terrify
worldlings. I doubt if the tourists trip it any
the less lightly at the National for being re-
minded that they are mortal and that flesh is
vile. For that matter, cremation enables us to
escape the indignities of the grave and to cheat
that worm to whom priests so lovingly refer.
Ruskin, meditating on this bridge, compares our
modern life unfavourably with that of the old
Lucerners, " with all its happy waves of light
and mountain strength of will, and solemn
expectation of eternity." Yet none that knows
the history of Switzerland can say that those
grave persons were better men than their
descendants. The vanity of life, forsooth ! it
was this soul-soddening lie that made our
forefathers so brutally indifferent to the welfare
of their kind, and absolutely reckless of the
interests of posterity. The man with a sound

race instinct is little concerned about the

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Lucerne, To-Day and Long Ago

duration of his individual life, but he does not
talk about its vanity. In the expectation of
eternity he is not likely to forget the value of
time. Then "let us take hands and help, for
to-day we are alive together."

K 145

THE LION OF LUCERNE

Fifty or sixty years ago, I have been told,
visitors were introduced to the Lion of Lucerne
by a veteran clad in the scarlet uniform — sadly
patched and faded — of the famous Swiss Guards
of the French King. This old man could hardly
have been a survivor of the massacre which the
monument commemorates ; he had probably
belonged to the corps some time between its
re-estabhshment by Louis XVI I L and its final
disbandment after the Revolution of July. The
pride which he no doubt took in the valour of
his fellows on the memorable loth August 1792
may perhaps be shared by the Swiss to-day, but
if the monument had not been erected in the
reactionary twenties of last century I very
seriously question whether it would ever have
been erected at all. For it is, after all, a
memorial not only to the doglike fidelity of the
brave mercenaries, but a disagreeable reminder
of the days when the cantons hired out the
flower of their manhood to fight and bleed in the
causes, just or unjust, of foreign powers. Poor,
mountainous countries seem to breed mer-
cenaries. The Scots were as fond of the trade
as the Switzers. Where a man has nothing else

146

The Lion of Lucerne

to sell, he sells his strength and courage, just as
woman sells her beauty. The Swiss troops who
figure in all European wars from the fifteenth to
the nineteenth centuries were not mercenaries,
one writer hotly affirms : they were recruited
by the cantons under regular treaties with
foreign states, they were organised and officered
by the cantons, they fought under their local
banners. To these conventions, we are told,
the confederation owed its immunity from
invasion. In reality, thousands of Swiss en-
listed as individuals in other armies, attracted
by the hope of pay and plunder ; but the
status of those supplied by their own govern-
ments in fixed contingents to foreign despots
seems to me more pitiable and ignoble still.
No doubt the " excellent lords " of " the praise-
worthy cantons " did well over the traffic.
Louis XIV. 's minister remarked that with the
gold the French kings had paid the Swiss you
could pave a road from Paris to Bale ; whereupon
a Swiss officer retorted that with all the blood
shed by his countrymen in the French service
. you could fill a canal from Bale to Paris. One is
reminded of the tribute of one hundred virgins
which the Gothic king is fabled to have paid the
caliph of Cordova.

There is hardly a banner in Europe under
which the Swiss have not fought for hire — except,
perhaps, that of Uberty. In France, Austria,

147

Switzerland

Spain and Italy, they have ever distinguished
themselves as the tyrant's most faithful watch-
dogs, staunch pillars of the throne. They
possessed the special virtue of the mercenary — •
they were true to the hand that fed them. They
were ready indeed to kill each other, should
duty command, though now and again blood
proved stronger than allegiance, as when in 1500
the Swiss basely betrayed their employer, the
Duke of Milan, to their countrymen in the
French service. But generally it was found
that so long as you had the money, you had
the Swiss. Sold into servitude by their feudal
owners at home, they obeyed without demur
any and every employer.

France was always the most liberal customer
of their Excellencies of the cantons. Between
1477 and 1850 it is computed that no fewer
than a million Swiss served in the armies of
France. At one time they contributed fully
half the infantry. It was, as we might have
guessed, the shrewd Louis XL who first re-
cognised the value of such auxiliaries to the
French crown. Unflinchingly brave, without
intelligence or scruple, they were the ideal
Janissaries of a would-be absolute king. Charles
VI 1 1, trusted them so well that he formed a
special bodyguard called the Cent-Suisses, dis-
tinguished by a blue uniform with red facings.
At Paris these Guards were killed to the hun-

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The Lion of Lucerne

dredth man, defending the person of Francis I.
In after years their duties became mainly
ceremonial and domestic. They were employed
chiefly about the palace and at Court functions,
much as the Pope's Swiss Guards are to-day.

It was Louis XIII. who organised an effective
fighting force of Swiss for the immediate pro-
tection of the sovereign. Marshal de Bassom-
pierre was the first colonel of this, the famous
Swiss Guard. Originally composed of twelve
companies which mounted guard according to
the precedence of their respective officer's
cantons, they were increased in 1763 to four
battalions, each of four companies, officered by a
colonel, a lieutenant, a major, four aides-major,
four sous-aides-major, and eight ensigns. Their
uniform was scarlet with blue facings. The
officers wore high silver-braided collars. The
Guard marched with the artillery and formed its
escort. It had many privileges and received
twice the pay of any native corps. It was not
bound to serve against Germany beyond the
Rhine, Italy beyond the Alps, or Spain beyond
the Pyrenees ; but, in fact, it very often over-
stepped these limits.

" A corps of Swiss," said Marshal Schomberg,
himself a soldier of fortune, "is in a French
army what the bones are to the human body,
not only on account of their valour, but especially
because of their patience and their disciphne.

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Switzerland

They are discouraged by no reverse or delay."
" They have never," says another writer, " been
reproached with anything but their insistence
upon being regularly paid. Point d'argent,
point de Suisse, says the proverb. It could not
be otherwise. In the Swiss regiments the theft
of a hen was punished with death. With such
a discipline, regularity of pay was absolutely
necessary."

At the beginning of the Revolution there
were eleven regiments of Swiss in the French
service besides the Cent-Suisses and the Guard.
Some of these troops took part in the defence
of the Bastille, and all were regarded with dislike
and suspicion by the people. The Chateau vieux
regiment, however, stationed at Nancy, was
stirred by the rebellious spirit of the age, and
went on strike for better pay, and the abolition
of flogging. They were attacked by the ferocious
Marquis de Bouille, with two other Swiss regi-
ments, and subdued after a fierce struggle.
Dog, it is said, will not eat dog ; but at the court-
martial that followed, the mutineers were sen-
tenced by their fellow-countrymen, one to be
broken on the wheel, twenty-two to be hanged,
and forty-one to the galleys. The sentences of
death were at once executed. An appeal was
made on behalf of the prisoners to their own
government ; but that detestable little oligarchy
approved the sentences and declared that if the

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The Lion of Lucerne

men were pardoned they would not be per-
mitted to re-enter their corps. Notwithstand-
ing, the forty-one mutineers were set at hberty
by order of the National Assembly and were
welcomed with enthusiasm at the bar of the
house.

To express its disgust at such clemency and
to preserve its subjects from the contagion of
republican ideas, the republic of Berne recalled
its contingent from the French service. The
Assembly decreed the disbanding of the Cent-
Suisses, but left the other corps standing,
though the Guards were ordered to confine
themselves to their barracks at Courbevoie
and Rueil and to surrender their artillery. The
aged colonel, M. d'Affry, kept in the background,
and managed to keep on good terms with the
new authorities. His officers, whose sympathies
were, of course, entirely with their paymaster,
the King, sent to Lucerne for instructions
how to act. Before they were answered, they
were summoned to defend the Tuileries against
the Marseillais. Commanded by Lieutenant-
Colonel de Maillardoz and Captain de Durler,
they made their last heroic stand in defence of
their employer's home on loth August 1792.
It was the apotheosis of the mercenary soldier.

The number of the defenders is stated by
Durler to have been about eight hundred. A
return made by order of the cantons accounts

Switzerland

for only 519, of whom 160 were killed. All the
cantons were represented except Schaffhausen
and Appenzell. Soleure furnished the largest pro-
portion of killed — 51 out of 105. From Fribourg
came no fewer than 125 men, in addition to the
lieutenant-colonel. He was murdered in the
Conciergerie, together with nine other officers.
The Baron de Bachmann, whom the revolu-
tionaries put to death on the scaffold, was from
canton Glarus.

On 20th August the remaining Swiss troops

were disbanded by the French Government.

Many of the men took service with Sardinia and

in England, where they formed part of a corps

known as Roll's regiment. To this belonged

the brave Durler, who died fighting under the

British flag in Egypt. Upon the restoration of

the Bourbons, Louis XVIII. showed that among

other things he had not forgotten the value of

foreign mercenaries to the King of France. He

hastily reconstituted both the Cent-Suisses and

the Garde Suisse, raising the number of the

former, by the way, to 317. To the command

of the Guard he appointed the Comte d'Affry,

son of the old colonel, who had fought under

Napoleon. WTien the Emperor returned from

Elba he ordered the Swiss to parade before him.

They remained in their barracks. Their colonel

was summoned to the palace. Upon his arrival,

two officers ordered him to give up his sword.

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The Lion of Lucerne

He drew it, and invited any man who was bold
enough to take it. No one dared and, armed,
he entered the presence of Napoleon. " Why,"
asked the great man, " did you not obey my
orders ? " " Because," replied the intrepid
Swiss, " I can take orders only from the King
and the cantons." " Do you know to whom
you are speaking ? " thundered the Emperor.
" Yes, to General Bonaparte." " You are speak-
ing," said the conqueror deliberately, " to the
Emperor of the French, and in that capacity
I order you to parade your regiment upon
the Place du Carrousel." " I regret," replied
d'Affry, " that I can take orders only from the
King to whom I took the oath of allegiance."
" You swore allegiance to me also in 1810."
" True, but you absolved me from it by your
abdication." " Good," said Napoleon; " I will
take steps to recall it to your memory." He
dismissed the bold Switzer, but contented him-
self with disbanding his regiment.

Louis XVni. rewarded this fresh instance of
fidelity by giving the Swiss the place of honour
upon his re-entry into Paris. By a convention
concluded with the cantons on ist June 1816
the strength of the Guard was fixed at two
regiments of 2298 officers and men each, and
four more regiments were raised, each 1956
strong, to be known as Swiss infantry of the line.
The Guards wore the old scarlet and blue uniform,

155

Switzerland

the infantry red coats with yellow buttons. The
colonel of the Guards received a salary of
15,000 francs a year — nearly thrice as much as
his comrade of the French Guards. The privates
were paid seventy centimes a day in the Guards,
and fifty centimes in the line.

During this last period of their service with
the French colours, the hardy sons of Helvetia
proved themselves, as ever, valiant defenders of
tyranny. They shared the fatigues and the
doubtful honours of the disgraceful expedition
into Spain to crush the liberties of the people
and to restore the hateful Ferdinand VII, to
the unlimited exercise of arbitrary power. Some
of the regiments remained on the south side of
the Pyrenees till 1827 ; it would have been well
for them if they had stayed there three years
longer. On the outbreak of the Revolution of
July, the sight of the hated scarlet uniform
goaded the Parisians to madness. At every
crisis in the history of France, these hirelings
from the mountains were found ready to step
between the monarch and his injured people.
The Swiss, as usual, did their duty. They fired
without hesitation on the mob, and were vigor-
ously attacked in return. A corps was besieged
in its barracks, which was set fire to by the
insurgents. At the Tuileries, the people gained
the upper floors, and fired from the windows on
the Swiss in the court below. The mercenaries

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The Lion of Lucerne

remembered the fate of their predecessors in
1792, and hastily retreated. With Charles X.
the Swiss Guard disappeared from France for
ever, and the confederation lost the best market
for its blood and sinew.

Spain, which had drawn as many as six
regiments at a time from the Catholic cantons,
employed no more Swiss after the French in-
vasion. Reding, who did such good service
during the campaign, was a Swiss officer. The
Protestant mercenaries preferred the service of
the states-general of Holland, which in 1748 had
as many as 20,400 Swiss in their pay. As late
as 1829 there were four Swiss regiments in the
Dutch army. The Emperor had his Hundred
Swiss, like his cousin of France, but generally
preferred to hire these mercenaries for the job
— which was never too dirty for the Helvetic
conscience. As late as the time of the Crimean
war, the English Government recruited a force
in Switzerland, which we had transported at
great expense as far as Smyrna when hostilities
came to an end. The men returned to their
native valleys to tire their simple neighbours to
the end of their lives with stories of the perils
of the deep and the wonders of the Orient.

Nowadays to most of us the words Swiss
Guards recall the ornamental warriors of the
Vatican. The popes were the first to take the
troops of the cantons into their pay, and they

15s

Switzerland

have retained them the longest. The supreme
pontiff's Swiss Guard is, I fancy, the oldest existing
regiment. It was founded in 1471 by Sixtus IV.,
and composed of 7 officers and 146 non-commis-
sioned officers and men. As most people know,
and some will learn with surprise, the hideous
uniform of these devout mercenaries was designed
by no other than Raphael. Unfortunately it
has been little affected by the vicissitudes of the
corps itself. The Swiss Guards were disbanded
in 1809, when Pius VII. was carried off to France,
and reorganised in 18 14. On the establishment
of the Roman republic in 1848 they were again
dismissed, only to reappear on the restoration of
the ninth Pius. They were spared upon the
annexation of the city to the Italian kingdom,
as an entirely ceremonial non-combatant force.
Their countrymen in the papal and Neapolitan
services have left a different reputation behind
them. Foreseeing an uprising in his dominions,
that stupid and tyrannical pope, Gregory XVI.,
in 1834 contracted with the Swiss Government
for the supply of two regiments of foot and a
troop of artillery, totalling 4401 men. These
were stationed in the legations of Romagna, as
the most disaffected districts. Curiously enough,
they first saw active service in the defence,
instead of to the injury, of the national cause.
When Pius IX. pretended to join the Italian
league against Austria, the Swiss troops under a

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The Lion of Lucerne

Grison, General de Latour, fought well at Vicenza
against the Imperialists, and were saluted by the
people with the unaccustomed cry, " Viva i
Svizzeri ! " On the proclamation of the repub-
lic, notwithstanding, the two infantry regiments
were dissolved. Some of the men returned home
and a few re-enlisted in the native army. Most,
however, passed into the service of the King of
the Two Sicilies.

That paternal sovereign and his predecessor
had maintained four regiments of Swiss in-
fantry, for the oppression of their subjects, since
1827, under conventions with the cantonal
governments of Lucerne, Uri, Unterwalden,
Appenzell (Inner Rhoden), Fribourg, Soleure,
Valais, Berne, and Grisons. These conventions,
together with the conditions of service and the
Swiss military code, may be read in extenso in a
book published at Geneva by Henri Ganter, an
ex-mercenary. The discipline was severe, even
ferocious. Death, flogging, and running the
gauntlet were the penalties for even minor
offences. The last-mentioned method of punish-
ment was often terrible enough, for it was a
means of gratifying the intense animosity which
divided the German and Latin members of the
same corps. The pay of a private was only
sixty-two and two-third centimes a day. Yet
the cantons appear to have had no difficulty
in recruiting volunteers for foreign service.

157

Switzerland

Enlistment, says Ganter, was for four years,
and was quite voluntary. Parents had even
to restrain their sons from engaging. Once
they had signed on, they swore fidelity to
their employer, and were sent on to the
chief recruiting station of the canton, whence
they were despatched to the general depot at
Genoa. Though no pressure or inducements were
brought to bear upon the lads to enlist, our in-
formant admits that desertions before and after
arrival at Naples were pretty frequent, and that
the men often tried to make themselves useless
as soldiers and so procure even a dishonourable

discharge. We are told of a certain D of the

canton Geneva, who might by his intelligence
have easily attained promotion but preferred
to pass most of his service in the guardroom.
He had received fifteen thousand strokes with the
cane, and was so used to this punishment that he
would let his comrades amuse themselves by
flogging him in return for a few glasses of wine.
The men seem to have been brutalised in this
sordid service and to have delighted in cruelty
to each other as well as to the people. The
officers jealously insisted on their right to inflict
the death penalty without the possibility of
pardon by the King. On doom being pronounced
the judge broke a black wand and threw it at
the feet of the condemned man, telling him that
he was as surely dead as the stick was broken.

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The Lion of Lucerne

Loathed by the NeapoHtans as the very body-
guard of tyranny, the Swiss regiments distin-
guished themselves in 1848 and i860 by their
courage and ferocity among the troops of Ferdi-
nand 11. They are accused of firing on the
people without provocation and warning, and
of massacring women and children. The four
colonels, Sigrist, Brunner, de Riedmatten, and de
Muralt, published an indignant denial of these
charges, but their part in the revolt had covered
the Swiss name with odium, and aroused the
liveliest indignation in Switzerland. The old
order of things had passed away in 1847, and the
confederation now refused to recognise the
conventions signed by the cantons or to permit
the Swiss arms to be borne on the standards of
the Neapolitan regiments. The Conservative
party in the cantons affected were, however,
sufficiently strong to prevent the recall of the
contingents, and even managed to keep up their
strength to the number agreed upon with the
other contracting party. But the men them-
selves mutinied on seeing their national ensigns
removed from their colours, and in 1859 the
Neapolitan Government thought fit to disband
the corps. A great number of the men, how-
ever, immediately re-enlisted in the newly
formed foreign legion, and fought obstinately
against Garibaldi in Sicily and on the Voltumo.
Meanwhile, a new brigade of Swiss in the employ

159

Switzerland

of Pius IX. had rendered itself odious by its
brutality towards the insurgent inhabitants of
Perugia. The appearance of the Sardinian army
presently drove the pontifical troops into the
fortress of Ancona and the Neapolitan army
into Gaeta. These strongholds of despotism
fell successively in September i860 and Feb-
ruary 1861. The Pope's mercenaries took refuge
in the city and territory of Rome ; the Swiss in
the garrison of Gaeta were sent back to their
own country. They had been treated harshly
by the Sardinians. Covered with vermin and
clothed in rags, they were transported by rail
from Genoa to Arona. At every station they
were greeted with groans and hisses by the
Italians, with cries of " Ecco i Borboni ! Porchi
di Svizzera ! Mangia macheroni ! Levate
questa porcheria ! " And so the last of the
Swiss mercenaries, with the exception of those
at Rome, returned to their country, which
blushed to receive them.

Thus closed a sorry chapter in the history not
of the Swiss nation but of the old rotten aristo-
cracy of Switzerland, who sold their peasantry
into bondage to foreign kings. The German
princes did the same. The old-fashioned ruler
believed himself to be the owner of his people,
and not unreasonably supposed he might sell
them as a farmer does his live stock. Those
ideas are dead in Switzerland, but they are not

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The Lion of Lucerne

dead in England. There are plenty of self-
styled intellectuals in London to-day who openly
express their desire for an absolute monarchy.
Most middle-aged English ladies of good family
believe that the working class was only created
to supply them with domestic servants. South
Kensington would vote solid to-morrow for the
introduction of slavery. The aristocratic party
does not proclaim these doctrines on the plat-
form or in the press, but it makes no secret of
them in the club and the drawing-room. So I
think it quite right and proper that wealthy
English tourists should sigh before Thorwaldsen's
Hon over the fate of the armed slaves of a
corrupt monarchy. For the Swiss of to-morrow
will not ! This monument should be set up in
a London suburb or a fashionable watering-place,
to be honoured by those who admire courage
blended with servility.

I, for one, respect these brave soldiers, worthy
of a better cause. It is easy to be hard on these
poor devils of mercenaries. They had no coun-
try of their own — it belonged to the patricians
of their cantons. They hoped to escape tyranny
at home by embracing servitude abroad. They
were simple souls, with much in common with
the cattle of their upland pastures. The Swiss
used to play in French humour the part assigned
to the Irishman in ours. A Swiss captain was
ordered to bury the dead after an engagement,

L l6l

Switzerland

so one story goes. He set to work with right
good will, and it was presently pointed out to
him that he was burying the living as well as the
dead. "As to that," he replied impatiently,
" if you listened to these bodies, they would have
you believe there isn't a dead man among them."
Voltaire is responsible for the yarn about the
German officer who begged for his life from a
Swiss soldier. " Alas ! sir," answered the oblig-
ing mercenary, " I will willingly grant you any
other favour, but your life — no ! " I like, too,
that story of the Swiss Guard who had orders to
let no one enter the Tuileries from the street.
" You can't enter," he said to a citizen who pre-
sented himself at the gate. " I don't want to
enter," explained the adroit townsman, " I wish
to leave this street." " Ah, that's another
matter," returned the sentinel, who drew back
to let him pass.

Men to whom such niaiseries could be
attributed were not very capable of weighing
the rights and wrongs of any quarrel. Certainly
none of them would have fought for the op-
pressors of his own land, as the Irish and Indians
have not hesitated to do. I don't suppose any
one of them would have stooped to shake hands
with a divorce court lawyer. And, on the whole,
I think these Swiss mercenary soldiers are as
deserving of a monument as any of those
who fight to extend the dominion of their own

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The Lion of Lucerne

country without troubling to ask themselves
whether their country's influence is for the good
of mankind or whether it means the propaga-
tion of vicious laws and customs, the heritage
of mediaeval times. Loyalty to one's flag some-
times means treason-felony to mankind.

163

LITTLE JOURNEYS FROM LUCERNE

Despite its kursaal and its horse races, its
dances at the National and its danses macabres,
no one Hngers very long in Lucerne. The call
of the mountains is too urgent and the lights of
the big hotels on their summits too friendly to
be resisted. Everyone you meet at Lucerne has
come down from a mountain or is about to go up
one. Not that this is a centre for real climbers,
for the true Alpinists. There are no peaks round
here which the professional mountaineer would
think it worth his while to bark his shins upon.
For him you must look rather at Grindelwald
and Zermatt.

Time was when the ascent of the Rigi was
regarded as a remarkable feat of endurance and
hardihood, and the man who had seen the
sunrise from the humble inn on the summit
would talk about the experience all the rest of
his life. That inn was built by a man called
Blirgi in 1816, and it had for a long time to be
kept going by the subscriptions of potentates like
the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and the Crown
Prince of Prussia. After a while it became
almost as popular as a tourist resort as it had
been as a resort for pilgrims. For as far back

164

'^Jrli\ '

'\^]mv

I-

Little Journeys from Lucerne

as i6go at the spot we call the Klosterli there
existed a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of the
Snows, to which a pilgrimage was made on the
6th of September every year. At one time as
many as nineteen thousand persons gained the
indulgence attached to this religious exercise in
one year. The chapel still supplies the spiritual
needs of the population of the mountain.

The railway up from Vitznau is the oldest of
mountain railways, and was inaugurated with
a great flourish of trumpets in 1871. In my
childhood, which was several years later, I can
remember its being spoken of still as an eighth
wonder of the world. He must be a weakling
that would use it. The path would present
no difficulties to a centenarian on crutches — at
least as far as the Rigi Staff el. The way lies
mostly through woods, where your footstep
startles hordes of squirrels. These little fellows,
with their fat cousins, the marmots, are among
the greatest joys of travel on foot in Switzerland.
The good wholesome wild things have not,
happily, been banished, as from lifeless Italy.
Birds fly overhead and in and out the bushes.
The Swiss do not look on everything that lives
as food, and though I suppose bird-butchery is
looked on here, as in less civilised countries, as
" sport," the Switzer generally prefers to aim
at a target, in preparation not for the kitchen

but the battlefield. Between the woods you

165

Switzerland

traverse vivid emerald pastures where the cows
move slowly to the eternal jingle of their leader's
bell. I ran down the Rigi once in a little less
than an hour, and acquired such momentum
that I could not avert a violent collision with one
of these interesting creatures who chanced to
cross my path broadside on. Luckily she was
fat, and neither of us was much the worse for
the encounter. This, I recollect, occurred some
distance below that wonderfully grand gate of
rock called, I think, the Hochstein, which
stands out like a miniature Thermopylae above
Weggis. All the way, up or down, you catch
glimpses between the trees and rocks of sublime
vistas of lake and mountain, till you emerge on
the bare summit up in the clear sky. It is not
always clear, as everybody knows, and I can
hardly think of the mountain without reaching
for my umbrella ; you may spend a week up
here and see nothing but the clouds ; or you may
be rewarded with that view which even the
Alpinists of to-day speak of with respect.

Pilatus, on the other side of the lake, is every
way much more of a mountain than the Rigi.
The highest of its seven peaks — the Tomlishorn —
is a thousand feet taller than the summit of the
mountain opposite. The Rigi is broad-backed
and rounded at the top, the Pilatus shaggy and
peaked and serrated as a true mountain should
be. On the whole, too, the view from the summit

i66

Little Journeys from Lucerne

is better ; but as you can go up both by railway,
and most people do so, there is no object perhaps
in vaunting one at the expense of the other.

The legend which explains the name of our
mountain is unusual and thrilling. It forms
an unauthorised sequel to the New Testament.
Pontius Pilate, it seems, was so unfortunate as
to incur the disfavour of the Emperor, and, to
escape a worse fate, killed himself in prison.
His body was thrown into the Tiber. The river
rose and threatened to burst its banks. The
authorities, strangely enough connecting this
phenomenon with the disposal of the governor's
corpse, recovered it and sent it all the way to
Vienne in Gaul, to be thrown into the Rhone.
However, this stream proved no more tolerant
than the other of its odious burden, and the Lake
of Geneva was next chosen as the place of burial.
The same floods and disturbances resulted, and
for the third time the body was brought to the
surface. It did not occur to the people of those
days to try some other means of disposing of it,
so they sought out a lonely little pool on the
summit of the mountain we know as Pilatus
and cast it in. According to another version,
the ex-governor of Judaea had selected this spot
while living as a place of retreat, and was there
found by the Wandering Jew and pitched into
the pool. But all authorities are agreed that
whether Pilate reached the mountain dead or

167

Switzerland

alive, he began upon his arrival to make things
most unpleasant for the inhabitants of the coun-
try round about. Storms raged, rain destroyed
the crops, rivers burst their banks, the Lake
of Lucerne inundated the surrounding district,
avalanches swept away villages, and all the while
the most hideous din resounded among the peaks
of the mountains. At last a Spanish scholar
volunteered to beard the pagan in his lair and
bring him to a more Christian frame of mind.
His path up the mountain was beset with
difficulties which might have daunted the
hardiest members of the Alpine Club. Torrents
as wide as rivers, chasms as deep as the bottom-
less pit, forbade his passage. The scholar made
the sign of the cross, and instantly these obstacles
were bridged by magnificent viaducts, which dis-
appeared as soon as he had passed. Assured in
this manner of the Divine protection, he pressed
on to the verge of the pool. A terrific vision rose
up before him — Pilate grown since his death to
the height of the tallest tower in Lucerne, dressed
like a Roman warrior, and brandishing the
trunk of a pine-tree. Undismayed, the Christian
champion gave battle. The combat lasted a
whole day and night. The mountain rocked on
its foundations. Trees and rocks were hurled
down into the lake. The burghers of Lucerne
trembled and made bets as to the issue of the
encounter. At the end of thirty-six hours a

i68

Little Journeys from Lucerne

tremendous thud, followed by a sound of iieavy

breathing, seemed to announce the final victory

of one or other of the combatants. The Spaniard

had floored Pilate. As it was not easy to slay a

man who was already dead, the victor admitted

the vanquished to terms. The troublesome

Roman swore on a fragment of the true cross,

which the scholar had thoughtfully brought with

him, to remain quiet in his pool on all days of the

week, except Friday, when he was to be allowed

to roam over the mountains. The scholar then

descended to the city and notified the terms of

the capitulation to the magistrates. A decree

was issued forbidding anyone to climb the peak

on Friday. From time to time hardy infidels

did so, with dire results. Near the pool they met

the awful form of Pilate clad in the red robes of a

judge. Only one or two escaped alive to tell the

tale, and these were blinded or maimed for life.

In the year 15 18 four sages got leave from the

avoyer to test the truth of the legend. They

went up into the mountain on the forbidden day,

and returned very much scared, to confirm the

tradition. Thirty-seven years later, however,

Conrad Gessner, the greatest naturalist of his

day, made the ascent on a Friday, and was able

to announce that the pagan had disappeared.

The prohibition was then removed. Till the

end of the sixteenth century, however, the vicar

of Lucerne once a year with much solemnity

169

Switzerland

threw stones into the pool and exorcised the
accursed spirit. These measures seem to have
been at last effectual, for the unhappy pro-
consul has never reappeared and his watery
habitation has nearly dried up. The snorting
and groaning of the mountain train has been at
times mistaken by the superstitious for the
expressions of his wrath at the invasion of his
domain.

Nowadays almost every mountain within
sight of Lucerne has its Grand Hotel and its
funicular railway. At night the lights of these
reputed eyesores sparkle like new constella-
tions in the heavens — here blazes a coronet of
fire, there a ruddy serpent marks the track of
the mountain train. The effect is startling but
rather beautiful. It is an affectation to esteem
as ugliness all the lamps men light in the higher
air. I can see much beauty in the beacons of
all colours that welcome the traveller to New
York by night, and there is surely something
sublime in the miles-long glare of the light-
house. The outcry against the disfigurement
of nature in Switzerland does not appear to
me to be altogether justified. The railways are
less objectionable than the hotels, and bring the
glories of the mountain within reach of the aged
and the feeble. Nor is a railway track anywhere
necessarily an unsightly feature in a landscape
— not more so at any rate than a highroad.

170

Little Journeys from Lucerne

The more recent hotels, moreover, are not
inartistically built, and the builders have now
generally sense enough not to place them on the
skyline. Some years ago I met a Switzer who
told me that he belonged to the society for the
preservation of the natural beauty of his country.
On the mountain hotels he was especially severe.
" I own a hotel at Interlaken," he explained.
" I find nowadays that tourists spend only a
night in the towns and hurry up next day to
stay on the top of some mountain. Formerly
they would have stayed with me, and just made
excursions to the mountains between breakfast
and dinner. These high-level hotels and railways
are spoiling the appearance of the country."
Doubtless the majority of the society are in-
spired by very different motives from this par-
ticular member, though Edouard Rod addresses
himself to the commercial aspect of the question
b}^ reminding the Swiss that by destroying the
picturesqueness of the mountains they will
drive away the foreigners it is their object to
attract.

Yet the hotels continue to rise on the highest
summits, and appear to pay well. Within sight
of Lucerne is the Biirgenstock, farther off the
Stanserhorn, with a view much better than the
Rigi's. The two of them during the greater part
of the winter shut out the sunlight from Stans,
the little capital of Nidwalden, which lies between

171

Switzerland

them. In the summer the place makes a good
objective for an afternoon's trip from Lucerne.
The steamer takes you to Stansstad, the tiny
port of the canton, and you land close to a watch-
tower five hundred years old. When most of
the men of Unterwalden had gone across the
lake to help their fellow-confederates at Mor-
garten, the town of Lucerne sent an expedition
to attack the canton here and at Buochs. At
the last-named place, the women, in the absence
of the men, beat off the invaders, and ever after
enjoyed the privilege of approaching the Com-
munion rail before the other sex. At Stansstad
a naval engagement took place. The market
boat of Uri came to the assistance of the Unter-
waldeners, and a millstone launched from the
platform of the watch-tower crushed the Lucerne
flagship and sunk her. An attack made from
the side of the Brunig was likewise repulsed.

It is a short walk from Stansstad to Stans.
The country is well cultivated and the town
itself stands in a very forest of fruit-trees. The
first object that greets your eyes is the statue
of Arnold von Winkelried " of battle martyrs
chief," gathering the spears into his bosom.
Here is a much finer hero than Tell, and one
happily less problematical. His devotion is
said to have decided the fortune of battle at
Sempach in favour of the Swiss. " To this
victory," says an anonymous chronicler, " a

172

Little Journeys from Lucerne

trusty man among the confederates helped us.
When he saw that things were going so ill and
that the [Austrian] lords always thrust down
with their lances and spears the foremost before
they could be touched by the halberds, then
did that honest man and true rush forward and
seize as many spears as he could and press them
down so that the confederates smote off all the
spears with their halberds, and so reached the
enemy."

This seems a more difficult and improbable
performance than Tell's, and, however much
Winkelried may have contributed to the victory,
we may be certain it was not exactly in this way.
Historians, of course, have denied that any such
person existed, but it has been conclusively
proved that a man named Eric Winkelried was
living at Stans nineteen years before the battle
of Sempach, and the same name occurs in a deed
three years later, with the particle von, which may
have been assumed in consequence of the bearer's
knightly achievement. That contemporary his-
torians are silent as to his act of valour does
not strike me as conclusive evidence against it.
We might as well test the accuracy of modern
history by the reports of journalists. And if it
is true that another Winkelried performed the
same feat in 1522 at La Bicocca — well, quite
probably he did it in emulation of his namesake
and ancestor.

173

Switzerland

With this conclusion every native of Stans
would agree ; and he will show you his house
close at hand — a farmstead, with a low, arched
doorway, which may in part be as old as the
legend. In the Rathhaus you may see the hero's
coat-of-mail, c|J)out which there may be reason-
able doubt. You may also see the portraits of
all the landammans of Nidwalden since the
year 1521. Nidwalden is the eastern division
of Unterwalden, the western portion being
known as Obwalden. Everyone does not seem
to be aware of this division, as only lately an
unfortunate tourist who had procured a gun
licence for one of the half-cantons was surprised
to find himself arrested when he attempted to
blaze away in the other. Appenzell and Basle
are also divided into two. Unterwalden was
one of the three primitive cantons, and was the
scene of the misdeeds of the wicked Landenberg.
It is still one of the most primitive parts of
Switzerland, and, as might be expected, the most
strict in its observance of Sunday. Scotch and
New England city fathers might learn a few
tips in the matter of Sabbatarian legislation
from papistical Unterwalden. The clergy who
enjoy such influence in the canton have certainly
not used it to feather their own nests, for they
are the worst paid in all Switzerland. Possibly
they take their revenge on their parishioners by
making them so uncomfortable on Sunday.

174

Little Journeys from Lucerne

The landsgemeinde of Nidwalden is the most
primitive of all the cantonal assemblies of
Switzeriand. It is held at Wyl, about twenty
minutes' walk to the eastward of Stans, in a
square walled-in enclosure. Overhead tall lime-
trees interlace their branches and protect the
sovereign people from the sun's rays. In the
middle is a stone terrace for the landamman,
round it are ranged wooden benches. The
' women and girls, wearing for once in a way the
national costume, sit on the wall, and admire
their natural lords making laws for their guid-
ance. Never from that wall has come that cry
which blanches the faces of our stoutest states-
men— " Votes for Women ! "

The proceedings are opened by the bedels in
historic costume, one of whom blows a stentorian
blast on his horn, while the other follows the
landamman to his dais, bearing the sword of
state. The people stroll in and take their seats
in numbers varying with the weather and the
interest of the agenda. They come in and out,
and appear little sensible of their responsibility.
When a sufficient number are assembled, the
landamman, using a time-honoured formula,
asks the people if they are ready to meet in
landsgemeinde. After a moment's silence the
bedel (I do not know his precise title) replies in
the name of the people, " Honoured landamman,
we wish to meet in landsgemeinde according to

175

Switzerland

ancient custom." " Then," says the landam-
man, " let us begin by asking the blessing of
Almighty God." The bedel takes his cigar out
of his mouth, and inclines his head reverently,
and everyone uncovers. Then the business
begins. It is not often very momentous and
is discussed with high good-humour. A bridge
wants repairing here, there is trouble between
two communes there over a piece of arable land.
In Nidwalden the council or nachgemeinde has
alone the right to promulgate new laws, which
must however be approved by this assembly.
Every native male above the age of eighteen has
the right to vote. There is no scrutiny. Every-
one knows his neighbour, and the voting is by a
show of hands. Strangers may seat themselves
among the electors, if they like, so long as they
do not abuse this hospitality by attempting to
vote. When an official is elected he is generally
found to have his speech of thanks written out
and ready in his pocket, and he has no hesitation
in reading it aloud. When these simple pro-
ceedings are terminated, everyone flocks to the
inns and bierhallen of Stans or Stansstad. The
rest of the day is a holiday. Friends from
different parts of the canton meet and ex-
change news. There are wrestling matches,
games, and the inevitable rifle matches.

In the year 148 1 Stans was the scene of a less

harmonious assembly. The confederates held a

176

) a*. » • 3 J
I 0 • • • • >

* > 1 >

, > 3 ■) - >

3
O

Little Journeys from Lucerne

Diet there to discuss such weighty matters as
the admission of Fribourg and Soleure to their
ranks and to adjust the ever-recurring disputes
between the towns and the country. From
high words the delegates very nearly came to
blows ^ and even threatened to separate without
coming to any agreement. This would have
meant the break-up of Switzerland. At this
juncture the parish priest of Stans hastily sent
word to Sachseln to the good hermit, Nicholas von
der Fliie, to implore his intervention and advice.
The representatives of the cantons were per-
suaded by this devout personage to resume their
sittings and to deal with one another in a more
conciliatory spirit. After protracted delibera-
tion, they drew up the Convention of Stans,
which recognised Fribourg and Soleure as mem-
bers of the league, but dealt a deadly blow at
liberty by forbidding all popular meetings and
binding the confederated governments to support
each other, whether right or wrong, against all
rebellion on the part of their subjects.

For the provisions of the Covenant of Stans it
would not be fair to blame the saintly mediator.
Nicholas von der Fliie, or Bruder Klaus, as he
is affectionately termed, is, I think, the only
Switzer whose name appears in the Catholic
calendar. This is at first sight startling, when
we consider the attachment of the forest cantons
to their ancient faith and to those negative

M 177

Switzerland

virtues for which Rome reserves her richest
rewards. Ireland, " the island of saints/' has
likewise been granted very little official recog-
nition of her saintliness. The explanation is
simple. Ireland and Catholic Switzerland are
poor and the honours of sainthood more costly
than those of the peerage. The descendants of
St Charles Borromeo ruined themselves in their
efforts to procure him his well-earned nimbus,
and the expenses of the canonisation of the
Blessed Peter Fourier amounted recently to
£9000. Unterwalden's local saint has still
to be content with the rays of the merely
" blessed " in lieu of the neat aureole of the
fully fledged saint. Yet he was born of poor
but honest parents as far back as 141 7, at
a farm near Sarnen, called from its position
near a precipice, Fliihli or der Fliie. Nicholas
was at no time in doubt as to the calling he
should pursue. As he afterwards assured his
friend, the parson of Stans, some time before he
was horn he was conscious of a star shining in the
heavens, which he understood to be symbolical
of his own future glory. His youth was passed
in tending his father's cattle, an occupation
which allowed him abundant leisure for medita-
tion and prayer. His priestly biographers lay
much stress as usual on his superiority to tempta-
tions, which I imagine cannot have been very
numerous or powerful in a lonely pasture on the

178

Little Journeys from Lucerne

Alps of Unterwalden at the beginning of the
fifteenth century. However, he saw something
more of the world when he was called away to
serve his country, sword in hand. He fought
well at Zurich in 1443 and at Ragatz in 1446,
and distinguished himself by preventing the
massacre of a number of Austrian prisoners at
Dissenhofen in Thurgau. On his return home,
he married a pious damsel named Dorothea
Wisling, not out of love for her, of course, but
in obedience to the will of his parents. They
had five sons and five daughters, who all imitated
the virtues of their parents. The cares of a
large family and even the more doubtful re-
sponsibilities of a magistrate did not distract
Nicholas from his interest in his post-mortem
existence. He saw visions and declared that he
was incessantly pursued and tormented by the
Evil One. He was found lying bruised and
bleeding at the foot of the cliffs. In 1467 he
forsook his home and wife (although, as his
contemporaries hasten to inform us, she was still
a most attractive woman) and set off to join some
hermits in Alsace. On the way, an inner voice
told him to seek a refuge in his own country. He
retraced his steps and, unknown to anyone, lived
for a long time under a pine-tree. He then made
himself a hut of brushwood at the Ranft, a little
way beyond Sachseln, where the cantonal

authorities presently built him a cell. This is

179

Switzerland

now a place of pilgrimage, and it was thence that
the anchorite went or sent word to the assembly
at Stans. Here he lived in great contentment
and greatly venerated by the whole countryside
for nineteen years, the tedium of his existence
varied by annual pilgrimages to Einsiedeln,
Engelberg, and Lucerne, and by spirited set-to
fights with the devil. He was supposed to take
no food except the consecrated host. Ques-
tioned on this point by an ecclesiastic, he re-
plied : "I never said so and I do not say so
now." Like most saints he seems to have been
somewhat of a clairvoyant, but he never gave
anyone advice as to their conduct which strikes
us as particularly wise or illuminating. Epilepsy
is the most probable explanation of his alleged
combats with an invisible foe and of his ecstatic
poses. This theory is not of course likely to be
adopted by the devout, least of all by the pious
people of the canton, who flock every year to his
shrine at Sachseln. There his bones are pre-
served in a glass case above the high altar. A
jewelled cross has been placed inside his ribs,
and from them are hung several ribbons of orders
won by Uuterwaldeners in foreign service. The
wooden figure in the transept is clad in his real
robes. Round the walls are tablets and pictures
recording the miracles performed at his inter-
cession.

The horrible bone-house or charnel-house is an

I So

Little Journeys from Lucerne

institution in many Swiss towns. That of
Stans was dedicated, I read, in 1482, and now
contains a neat pyramid of human skulls, each
labelled with the former owner's name. A
good many of these ghastly fragments of
humanity belonged, I imagine, to the victims of
the massacre of 1798, who are commemorated
by a tablet in the outer wall. France had trans-
formed the old league of cantons into the
Helvetic confederation, and imposed on the
Swiss a constitution which swept away all
inequalities between nobles and peasants and
states and subject territories. These reforms
were spoilt by the harsh and overbearing manner
in which they were carried out ; and to the old
Catholic cantons they were inherently repug-
nant. Schwyz and Uri, after a gallant resistance,
accepted the new order of things ; so did
Obwalden, though under protest. But in Nid-
walden the people were incited by the clergy
to resist the new constitution to the death and
to put from them the blood-stained liberties of
renascent France.

The whole population flew to arms. In Sep-
tember, the French, commanded by General
Schauenbourg, attacked the half-canton from
the lake and the Brunig. Their boats were
beaten off at Kehrsiten, at the foot of the
Burgenstock, but after repeated failures a land-
ing was effected at Hiittenort. Thence the

181

Switzerland

invaders intrepidly fought their way over the
mountain. In the meantime their comrades,
after desperate fighting, had forced the passage
of the Drachenried, and the two divisions, about
10,000 strong, met in the meadows round Stans.
The people, about 2000 in number, rushed on
them with what arms they could seize. Women
and children fought as well as the men, and
the French could not have spared them if they
would. A priest was slain at the altar; the
blind octogenarian artist, Von Wyrich, was killed.
The French lost 2000 men ; the Unterwaldeners,
312 men and 102 women. Every house in the
open country was burnt down, and Stans itself
escaped very narrowly.

The French, their fury exhausted, were the
first to succour their brave but misguided
opponents. Schauenbourg distributed food
among the survivors of the struggle, and es-
tablished a school for the orphan children of
those who had fallen. This was a noteworthy
event in educational history, for the teachers
selected were no other than Philip Stalder of
Escholzmatt and Heinrich Pestalozzi of Berne.
But as the Nidwaldeners had refused civilised
government so they thwarted all attempts to
educate their children. As I have said, the
people of Stans sit in almost total darkness a
great part of the year.

But the lake is the greatest deUght of Lucerne,

182

Little Journeys from Lucerne

the source of its popularity to-day as it has been
of its prosperity in the past. The lake of the
four valleys — for so Mr Coolidge says we must
translate the name Vierwaldstattersee — is the
Mediterranean of Switzerland : on its shores the
republic was born, from them it has grown in
all directions. Every spot at which we touch
recalls some episode in the making of the nation.
There may be, for all I know, other inland
waters which surpass these in beauty, but none
can unite to the same degree natural gran-
deur with historical significance and romantic
interest.

It is strange to reflect as we pass so lightly over
this lake between these sheer walls of rock that
an abyss of water lies beneath us nearly four
times deeper than the North Sea. Of course
this depth is trifling compared with that of Lago
Maggiore, which smiles up at the sky 646 feet
above the level of the sea and reaches down 552
feet below it. Yet even the Lake of Lucerne can
be stirred by the fohn or south wind into fury
as terrible as that of any ocean. Near Brunnen
the spray is sent fifty or sixty feet high into the
air, and it is easy to understand the terror of
the conscience-stricken Gessler. The lake should
prove a good training-ground for the open seas,
and, in fact, the boatmen have enjoyed a repu-
tation for seamanship from the earliest times.
Some of them were employed by the Doge of

183

Switzerland

Venice at the beginning of the fourteenth
century in an expedition to Syria. Steamers
were first launched on the lake in 1836, and since
then have multiplied rapidly. Motor-driven
craft are now almost as numerous, and motor
boat-races are among the recognised events of
a Lucerne season. A once-famous boat, the
Trefle-a-Quatre, came to grief in 1905 on the
pointed rock named the Schillerstein opposite
Brunnen.

There is one pretty village nestling among
orchards between the foot of the Rigi and the
water's edge which has a history curious enough
to be related here. This is Gersau^ which for
five hundred years constituted a distinct sove-
reign state — the smallest perhaps ever known
in Europe. Its territory never exceeded three
miles by two, its population at the present day
falls short of two thousand. The origin of this
tiny republic is unromantic. Held for centuries
by the abbey of Muri, then by the Hapsburgs,
it was mortgaged in 1333 to two of the richest
inhabitants, Rudolf von Freienbach and Jost
von Mos. The villagers then set to work to
hoard up their pennies, and in 1390 acquired
the land from the mortgagees for 690 pfen-
nigs. Gersau had already joined the league
of the forest cantons, and one of her men
captured the banner of the Count of Hohen-
zollern at Sempach. Her neighbour Weggis had

184

Little Journeys from Lucerne

in like manner bought her freedom, but was
bought up again by Lucerne. That domineering
town tried how to obtain possession of Gersau,
but on an appeal to the arbitration of Berne her
claims were dismissed, and the liberties of the
little republic were affirmed by the Emperor
Sigmund in 1433.

There seems often to have been bad blood
between the village and the city, and the other
cantons had frequently to intervene to preserve
the peace. In the course of these disputes the
Lucerners hung a man of straw on the gallows
at Gersau, in derision of the inhabitants' pre-
tensions to power over life and limb ; and the
Gersau men promptly clothed it in the blue and
white colours of Lucerne, to the intense indigna-
tion of the townsmen. By order of the con-
federates the colours were removed by one party
and the figure itself by the other. It is a pity
that the little community did not realise that the
existence of a gallows is in itself a disgrace to any
state large or small, and that the best fruits it can
bear are the people who advocate its retention.

Gersau, like all the surrounding districts, held
fast by the old faith, and even sent its quota of
men to fight the Protestants at Kappel. In the
war of Vilmergen it furnished a contingent of
seventy-five men to the Catholic army, and in
1712 as many as ninety-two Gersauers fought for
their faith under the banner of the local saint,

185

Switzerland

Marcellus. In 1798 that banner was surrendered
to the French troops and the ancient repubhc
was absorbed in the new Helvetic state.

In 18 14 Gersau, with all the other lumber of
the Middle Ages, floated to the surface once
more, and absurdly enough sent a contingent
of twenty-four men to join the allied armies on
the return of Napoleon from Elba. But the
powers, so far from being grateful for this assist-
ance, coolly handed over the little state to her
former friend and protector, the canton Schwyz ;
with which, in spite of piteous appeals and pas-
sionate protests, it was finally incorporated in
April 1818.

Beyond Gersau, steering south, the scenery of
the lake changes. It becomes sublime rather
than beautiful. Chalets and gardens no longer
welcome you to shore. The mountains close in,
and rise on either side sheer upward from the
profound waters. At Brunnen we catch a
glimpse of a level valley reaching up to Schwyz
and the mountains behind. Immediately after
the cliffs wall us in. At their base, appearing
and disappearing between tunnels scooped in the
living rock, the train screams and whistles on
the road to Italy. For human habitations you
must look far up on the heights, where dark
specks indicate men, white patches, houses. On
the western side, green pastures reach the verge
of the precipice, and cattle wander near the

186

Little Journeys from Lucerne

perilous edge. We are in the bay of Uri.
Ahead the enormous cap of the Uri Rothstock
is reddening in the sun. We are in the very
heart of Switzerland. Yonder lies the Riitli,
where the patriarchs of the republic met in
solemn league and covenant. What matters it
whether such men lived or died ? The nation
has consecrated this spot to an ideal, which it
will not forget. Opposite a chapel marks the
spot where Tell sprang ashore pushing back the
boat of the Austrian oppressor into the boiling
lake. It is painted with frescoes illustrating the
patriot's career. At Kiissnach, on that neglected
arm of the lake which reaches towards Zug, is
another chapel to his memory on the spot where
his vengeance was consummated and Gessler fell.
The wind from the mountain blows keen about
our ears and makes Switzers of us all.

187

IN THE LAND OF TELL

One gloomy, thunderous afternoon I landed at
Fluelen, and walked to Altdorf, where, as I have
so often been told, neither Tell nor anybody shot
any apple. However, a picturesque fable will
draw most of us farther than a bald truth. The
little capital of Uri is worth visiting for its own
sake. It is a charming little town built like our
English villages on each side of the highroad—
the highroad that leads over the St Gotthard
into Italy and to the end of Europe. I glanced
upwards at the dark wood on the east which over-
hangs the town and protects it from falling
rocks, and in which the woodman's axe may
never be wielded, just as Schiller tells us. I
had read William Tell while crossing the lake
and was rather glad to finish it. The comic
relief to these heroics was forthcoming in the
village idiot of Altdorf, who courted my atten-
tion and was as conscious as the rest of his
countrymen of the commercial value of physical
pecuHarities. Indeed I fancy he affected to be
more of an idiot than he really was for my benefit,
and made a show of swallowing a cigarette which
I had given him. I was not a httle ashamed of
amusing myself with this poor devil, and was
glad when he was sternly called off by a pohce-

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In the Land of Tell

man or a landamman or a burgomaster or
some such official person wearing a peaked cap
and a light tweed suit.

I had now leisure to examine Kissler's statue
of the local hero, a vigorous composition not
unworthy of its subject. It is overlooked by a
tower which was certainly there in 1307, and is
stated to have been the office of the tithe col-
lector of a nunnery at Zurich to which Uri owed
some kind of tribute. The boy is supposed to
have stood under a lime-tree hard by, where the
local assizes were held. This was cut down m
1369 and its site is marked by a fountain with
the figure of the founder, a magistrate named
Besler, who thought himself more entitled to
commemoration than the historic tree.

The apple has played an important part in
the world's history. In the fruit kingdom it
reigns in proud sovereignty. It is true that
countless poets (chiefly of the young or college
variety) have sought inspiration of the grape, and
that in the last decades of the nineteenth century
the pomegranate tried audaciously to pose as the
symbol that should explain the eternal verities.
But the passionate pomegranate convinced no-
body but a few artists and some young ladies
who yearned after souls ; and though I admit
the distinction and fascination of the juice

" that can with logic absolute
The two and seventy jarring sects confute."

189

Switzerland

I must own that at great crises of history the '
human mind has always called in the lordly yet '
homely apple. And what a pother it has always
caused ! First the unfortunate denouement of
the garden scene of the Eden tragedy ; then ■
the rape of Helen and the Trojan war ; and last, .'
but assuredly not least, the tumult of the Swiss ;
war of freedom. Placid, succulent fruit of dis- ;
cord !

The apple that raised William Tell to great-
ness has been sung by poet and musician. But <
not least pleasing is the version of the " White
Book " of the Sarnen notary that dates from
the middle of the fifteenth century.

" Now it happened one day that the bailiff,
Gessler, went to Ure, and took it into his head t
and put a pole under the lime-tree in Ure, and
set up a hat upon the pole, and had a servant near
it, and made a command whoever passed by
there he should bow before the hat, as though ,
the lord were there ; and he who did it not, j
him he would punish and cause to repent i
heavily, and the servant was to watch and tell ^
of such an one. Now there was an honest man j
called Thall ; he had also sworn with Stou-
pacher (in a conspiracy already made against
the Austrians). Now he went rather often to
and fro before it. The servant who watched
by the hat accused him to the lord. The lord
went and had Thall sent, and asked him why

190

In the Land of Tell

e was not obedient to his bidding, and do as he
vas bidden. Thall spake : 'It happened with-
)ut mahce, for I did not know that it would vex
i/our Grace so highly ; for were I witty, then
lA^ere I called something else and not the Tall'
[[i.e. Fool). Now Tall was a good archer ; he
tiad also pretty children. These the lord sent
for, and forced Tall with his servants that Tall
must shoot an apple from the child's head. Now
Tall saw well that he was mastered, and took an
arrow and put it into his quiver ; the other
arrow he took in his hand, and stretched his
cross-bow, and prayed God that he might save
his child, and shot the apple from the child's head.
The lord liked this well and asked him what he
meant by it [that he had put an arrow into his
quiver]. He answered him and would gladly
have said no more. The lord would not leave
off ; he wanted to know what he meant by it.
Tall feared the lord, and was afraid he would
kill him. The lord understood his fear and
spake : ' Tell me the truth ; I will make thy
life safe and not kill thee.' Then spake Tall :
' Since you have promised me, I will tell you the
truth, and it is true : had the shot failed me, so
that I had shot my child, I had shot the arrow
into you or one of your men.' Then spake the
lord : ' Since now this is so, it is true I have
promised thee not to kill thee,' and had him
bound, and said he would put him into a

191

Switzerland

place where he would never more see sun or
moon." 1

Then Tell was thrown into a boat, and the
lord Gessler sailed with him for a dark dungeon.
But a great storm came on, and the boatmen
were fearful that they would sink. So they un-
loosed Tell (for he was a skilful sailor), and bade
him take them to land. He made for a flat rock,
and, just as he brought the craft alongside, seized'
his forfeited bow and arrow^s. Then jumping'
out himself on to the rock, he pushed the boat
with Gessler and the terrified sailors adrift on
the stormy waters. Ever since the rock has
been known as " Tellsplatte." But fearing that
Gessler might escape Tell fled swiftly over the
hills to the " Hohle Gasse," near Kiissnacht,
and there laid himself in ambush to wait for the
coming of the lord. At last he came, and Tell,
loosing an arrow from his bow, shot the tyrant
dead. And Gessler fell back, crying with his
latest breath, " This is Tell's shaft." But Tell
went away over the mountains to his home in
Uri. V The chronicler of the '' White Book " does
not say that Gessler's defier took any other part
in the uprising of the cantons, or tell of any of
his exploits in the war of freedom.

Such is the legend of William Tell, the archer-
patriot, the prototype of Swiss liberty. One
might quarrel with the idolatry that has been

» Translation by Mr W. D. M'Crackan.
192

In the Land of Tell

lavished on him. It would have been more heroic
to refuse the test that endangered his child's life,
to have shot down the tyrant where he stood,
instead of lurking behind bushes to assassinate.
But why carp at the details of a picturesque
story, when alas ! criticism with its heavy foot
dogs the nimble steps of the romancer ? ^^ ^ ^ .

At one time the heresy of the unbeliever met I,

with harsh treatment at the hands of the patriotic
people of Uri. In 1760 a certain Uriel Freuden-
berger wrote a pamphlet that cast doubts on
the historical existence of the hero, and immedi-
ately an infuriated populace seized on the offend-
ing papers and had them burned publicly by the
hangman. But even earlier than this the legend
had been looked at askance, for were not all
contemporary chroniclers silent about him ?
Yet it was asserted that in 1388 no less than
a hundred and fourteen persons in Uri had sworn
to the landsgemeinde that they personally had
known Tell. How convincing it would have been
if eighty years after Napoleon's death the French
Chamber had been forced to call together a hun-
dred persons to swear to the conqueror's exist-
ence !

The legend, indeed, is older by far than Swiss ^ ^

freedom. The skilful longbowman forced by a
tyrant to shoot an apple from the head of his i

child is a figure familiar to the folk-lore of \

half-a-dozen Germanic countries. As far north
N 193

Switzerland

as Iceland is his exploit sung, in Norway, Den-
mark and Holstein, and by the green waters of
the Rhine. Saxo Grammaticus, the twelfth-
century father of Hamlet, has told the story
in pompous Latin ; the author of " William
Cloudesly " has repeated it in the pure English
of our ancient ballads. But Cloudesly was more
akin in character to Robin Hood and the English
heroes of the merry greenwood than to the
Swiss patriot. He proposed tSe apple test in a
spirit of braggadocio to save his own neck. Still
a comparison of the two legends leaves no doubt
of their common origin :

" Thou art the best archer, then sayd the Kynge,
Forsothe that ever I se.
And yet for your love, sayd Wyllyam
I wyll do more maystery.

" I have a sonne is seven yere olde,
He is to me full deare ;
I wyll hym tye to a stake ;

All shall se, that be here ; *•»

" And lay an apple upon hys head,
And go syxe score paces hym fro,
And I my selfe with a brode arrow
Shall cleve the apple in two.

" Now haste the, then sayd the Kynge,
By hym that dyed on a tre.
But yf thou do not, as thou hast sayde
Hanged shalt thou be.

194

In the Land of Tell

" That I have promised, sayd Wyllyam
That I wyll never forsake.
And there even before the Kynge
In the earth he drove a stake :

" And bound thereto hys eldest sonne.
And bad hj^m stand styll thereat ;
And turned the childs face hym fro,
Because he should not start.

" An apple upon hys head he set
And then hys bowe he lent :
Syxe score paces they were meaten
And thether Cloudesle went.

" There he drew out a fayr brode arrowe,
His bowe was great and longe,
He set that arrowe in his bowe.
That was both styffe and stronge.

• •••••

" Cloudesle clefte the apple in two.
His soone he dyd not nee.
' Ouer Godes forbode,' sayde the Kynge,
' That thou should shote at me ! ' "

William of course not only saves his life, but is
given a position of trust about the king ; his
wife and children are well provided for, and all
ends happily in the good old-fashioned English
way.

But quite apart from the fact that this apple
legend was in circulation long before its hero is
said to have lived, it is quite impossible to find
any niche in history for the picturesque figure of
Wilham Tell. Gessler, in the " White Book," was

195

Switzerland

one of the Hapsburg bailiffs, but alas ! in Uri
the last Hapsburg bailiff was found in 1231,
and the cleaving of the apple is placed by its
defenders some eighty years later. The three
forest cantons of Switzerland did indeed unite
against the Austrian's tyranny, but it was by a
long and weary struggle, in which the whole
population bore a part, that independence was
achieved, not by the exploits of a single man.
History has given the cantons the more honour- '
able part, but every patriotic Swiss prefers
the romantic story of Tell and the murdered
tyrant to the more sober narrative of the quiet
heroism of his peasant ancestry.

The truth is William Tell was an epical char-
acter, as Achilles was, differing only in degree'
and remoteness, not in kind. The notary of|
Sarnen was not a genius, therefore we have no
Iliad. But what we have is a collection ofj
popular legends, embodying the ideals and!
aspirations of a rude but freedom-loving people,
who had just shaken themselves free of ai
tyrant's yoke. For years these stories were
handed down by word of mouth, then, when the
young confederation was flushed with victory,
rejoicing in its overthrow of that pillar of I
European chivalry, Charles the Bold of Bur-
gundy, for the first time the legends were put
down in black and white. Three heroes were
put forward, one by each of the three cantons of

196

In the Land of Tell

Uri, Unterwalden and Schwyz, Queerly enough,
the most legendary of the trio caught most
deeply the popular fancy.

It is strange that pride in a heroic past is more
deep-seated in states and individuals than is the
desire for a splendid future. The forest cantons,
having won to independence by their own
exertions, created for themselves a mythical
and glorious history. They had been, they said,
from time immemorial free and independent
republics. Voluntarily they had submitted to
the Emperor Frederick II. But the hated
Hapsburg had oppressed them, had insulted
them by giving them cruel and rapacious
governors. In Tell the ancient spirit of inde-
pendence had reawakened. He had restored
them to the possession of their ancient rights.
And so the heroes' sword, or, to speak more
strictly, arrows, gleamed brighter for this re-
flection of the age of gold.

Other legends there are that cluster round this
first stand made for freedom by the Swiss.
These are really marked by a certain degree of
historical accuracy, though the colours are
heightened by the romancers' imagination. The
oppressions of the bailiffs are still set forward
as the ultimate cause of revolt.

At Samen, von Landenberg, the governor,

coveted a fine yoke of oxen belonging to a farmer

of Melchi. He sent his servants to take them

197

Switzerland

by force, charged to tell the farmer thati
" peasants must draw the plough " themselves.
This enraged the old man's son, who struck at
one of the servants with his ox-goad, breaking
his finger. The insulted governor sent for the
rebellious youth, but he had fled, fearing the
lord's anger. So von Landenberg seized on the
old farmer himself, dragged him to the castle and
had his eyes put out.

And other governors were just as bad.

"In those days there was an upright man in
Alzellen who had a pretty wife, and he who was
lord there wanted to have the woman whether
she would or not. The lord came to Alzellen into
her house ; the husband was in the forest. He
forced the woman to make ready a bath for him,
and said she must bathe with him. The woman
prayed God to keep her from shame. . , . The
husband came in the meantime and asked her;
what ailed her. She spake : ' The lord is there
and forced me to make ready a bath for him.'
The husband grew angry, and went in and smote
the lord to death in that hour with an axe, and |
delivered his wife from shame." ^

At the same time Gessler reappears as bailiff'
"in the name of the empire" at Steinen in,
Schwyz, where lived also one Stoupacher.
Stoupacher had prospered in the world and built
for himself a fine house of stone. One day the
1 Translation by Mr W. D. M'Crackan.
198

I In the Land of Tell

I bailiff noticed it and demanded whose it was.
j "It belongs to God, your lordship, and to me,"
j replied the man, for he feared exceedingly the
anger of the lord. And Gessler wrathfuUy said
that it was a fine thing for a peasant to have so
fine a house, and continued to harass Stoupacher
because of it. When this weighed down the
heart of the good man, his wife begged to know
the cause of his sadness, for she said, " Although
it is said that women give but foolish counsels,
who knows what the Almighty may not bring to
pass ? " So he laid bare his sorrow to his wife,
who counselled him to seek out others in Uri
and Unterwalden who suffered also at the hands
of the governors. And she told him of the
families of Fiirst and of Zur Frauen.

Now before long Stoupacher fell in with him
who had struck the servant of von Landenberg
with the ox-goad, burning to avenge his blinded
father, and also with one of the Fiirsts of Uri.
" Each confided his need and grief to the other,
and took counsel and they took an oath to-
gether. And when the three had sworn to each
other, then they sought and found one from
Nidwalden ; he also swore with them, and they
found now and again secretly, men whom they
drew to themselves, and swore to each other
faith and truth, both to risk life and goods, and
to defend themselves against the lords, and
when they wanted to do and undertake any-

199

Switzerland

thing, they went by the Myten Stein at night
to a place which is called Riitli. There they met
together and each one of them brought men
with him in whom they could trust, and con-
tinued that some time and met nowhere else in
those days save in the Riitli."

Now so monstrous were the oppressions of the
bailiffs that before long a powerful band of injured
men gathered around Stoupacher in the moun-
tains, until at last they were so strong that they
were able to carry on warfare against the Haps-
burg rulers. Strong towers and castles they
took and levelled with the ground, Zwing Uri
near Amsteg, Swandau in Schwyz, Rotzberg
in Nidwalden, and the castle of Samen in
Obwalden, where there was a very fierce fight.
And when the governors had been expelled, the
three forest cantons made a perpetual league to
guard their independence, and made Becken-
ried the place of their meetings.

That is the "White Book" narrative. It
bristles with inaccuracies, but at least the names
of von Landenberg, Stauffacher or Stoupacher,
Fiirst and Zur Frauen are known to history. The
story of the three men meeting by night on the
lonely Riitli is picturesque, and not impossible.
History does not confirm it, neither does she
condemn it ; and the Riitli cries out for a con-
spiracy, just as Stevenson declares that certain
spots demand a murder. So the reader may

200

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In the Land of Tell

take or leave the story as he will. For my part,
I incline towards that suspension of disbelief for
a moment that is supposed to constitute poetic
faith.

Yet it is a pity that the growth of at best
dubious legends should have been allowed to
obscure in the popular imagination the splendid
fight that the peasants of the mountains and the
forests actually made for freedom. The battle
of Morgarten in 1315 has been termed the Swiss
Thermopylae, but by it the cantons won, not
lost, their liberty. As a source of inspiration
it should be equal at least to Bannockburn. It
was a dramatic episode. The peasantry of the
forest states had at last dared to take arms
against the power of Austria : the monastery of
Einsiedeln had been attacked. Then the Em-
peror sent out an expedition under his brother
Leopold to crush the insolent upstarts who had
dared to flout the head of the Holy Roman
Empire. Proudly the thoughtless cavalcade
trooped into the narrow pass of Morgarten, and
along the Lake of Egeri. The morning sun-
light flashed on burnished armour, and fluttering
pennons of rainbow hues challenged the hoary
mountains. Then suddenly a rattle of pebbles
down the hillsides that changed to a thundering
roar as huge boulders were dislodged, bounding
from crag to crag until they scattered death
among the Austrian host. The despised peasants

201

Switzerland

had grimly ranged themselves on the neighbour-
ing heights. A fusillade succeeded of rocks an(
tree-trunks. Panic spread among the Austrians.]
In the pass of Morgarten was a struggling mass
of men and horses, fighting against each othei
to escape from the death trap in which the]
found themselves. Down rushed the peasants
from the hills. Before their scythes and axes
the flower of the Empire went down, or, flying
headlong, were driven by thousands into the sunj
lit waters of the lake. Leopold, pale and terrifiedj
escaped to bring the news of the slaughter of his
troops. A few weeks later the victors met a^
Brunnen, and on gth December 1315 renewec
and extended the pact of 1291, which for fiv^
hundred years formed the basis of the ieden
union.

It is, of course, of no material importanc^
whether Tell actually lived or not, and one's onl]
regret is that Switzerland was not endowed witl
a more nobly-imagined national hero. Howevei
he appears to satisfy the aspirations of oldl
fashioned Switzers, particularly of his fellowj
countrymen of Uri. Once a year Schiller T
rather tedious tragedy is acted in the littl]
wooden theatre on the outskirts of Altdoi
The audience is usually composed of local people
and of friends of the performers, with a sprinkling
of tourists. There are generally several monks
and priests to be seen on the rough wooden

202

tin the Land of Tell
benches. The clergy have always been staunch
upholders of the legend. The cast is composed,
as at Ober Ammergau, of people of the neigh-
bourhood— innkeepers, farmers, schoolmasters,
artisans, and shopkeepers. They are partly
selected because of their physical fitness for the
parts, and are very well trained by the director
of the Lucerne cantonal theatre. They are
somewhat stagy and wooden, like most amateurs,
but the audience is not critical and appreciates
their obvious sincerity. Between the acts you
go out into the air, and regale yourself with beer
and cakes under the trees till a cow-bell an-
nounces the end of the interval.

203

EINSIEDELN

The Virgin Mother is beloved in the country ol
Tell. The arid theology of Geneva has chase(
her from many of the newer cantons, but ii
the mountain fastnesses of Einsiedeln she keeps
her ancient state and splendour and draws to hei
shrine pilgrims from every quarter of the globe
to the number of two hundred thousand ever^
year.

She is miraculous, Our Lady of the Hermitsj
Many times has she escaped the perils of fire anc
war. Five times has her habitation been burnt!
to the ground, but always the sacred image has
reappeared to bring consolation to thousands
of the faithful. Her altars are hung witl
votive tablets, which, in crude line and garisl
colour, tell the story of marvellous escapes and
recoveries, which never would have taken place
but for the gracious intercession of Our Lady.

It is a desolate spot, you think, that the holy
maiden has chosen for her miracles ; dark and
wind-swept, backed by a forest of gloomy firs,
with the two sharp peaks of the Mythen in the
distance. Still less happy is the building that
men raised for her in the first half of the eigh-
teenth century. Of no particular architecture,

204

Einsiedeln

the Benedictine monastery rears two nondescript
towers, one on either side of the doorway, and
then, with geometrical precision, extend two
wings of commonplace masonry to right and
left. In front of these sweep semicircular
colonnades, the style in imitation of Bernini.

But gay and humming with life is the little
town of nearly nine thousand inhabitants which
has grown up round the monastery. For
Einsiedeln has become a second Lourdes, and
pilgrims of all classes must be catered for just as
though they were vulgar tourists. And, more-
over. Catholic pilgrims must always have
offerings to lay before the shrines of saints, with
relics and souvenirs that can be dipped in holy
water and blessed by the priests on days of
festival. So the little town is crowded with
shops and open stalls where tinsel saints and
Virgins of wax or plaster, where sacred hearts
and models of human limbs, with medals,
pictures, lockets and beads, heaped together in a
tawdry jumble, are loudly canvassed by their
enterprising hawkers. Religion and commercial
3nterprise join hands. The cinematograph is
pressed into the service of Christ and the
Mother of God ; pilgrimages to Jerusalem,
famous miracles, and the representation of
the Passion are jerked before the eyes of the
sober, pious bourgeois who form the great
mass of the September pilgrims. The audience

205

Switzerland

is edified and no one's sense of propriety is
shocked.

During the weeks of festival one of the chiel
attractions of this mountain sanctuary is the
fountain that stands in the centre of the opei
space in front of the monastery — Our Lady's
Spring. For here the Virgin of the Snows
performs some of her most wonderful miracles^
It is said, and believed of simple people, thatj
wandering far afield, Christ himself came one
day to this spring, and being thirsty, drank dee]
of its waters, which straightway he blessed foi
ever afterwards. And pilgrims tell of marvel-
lous cures effected at the fountain under the
smile of his holy mother, who watches over the
sacred water from the shadow of a grey marble
canopy supported on seven columns. The bline
see, the dumb speak, the sick are cured of then
diseases, the sins of the penitent are washec
away, exactly as in the days of the apostles.

Hundreds of pilgrims gather round the spring
to take their share in its benefits. But here
difiiculty arises. The water is thrown into the
basin through fourteen jets of bronze, eacl
representing some strange bird or beast. Froi
which jet of water did the Master drink ? Foi
the pilgrim ascribes a great antiquity to the little
bronze and marble structure ! So, as no tablel
points out the sacred stream, he must drinl
from each in turn, lest by chance he should hil

206

Einsiedeln

m one that had not satisfied the Divine thirst,
lor received the Divine blessing.

Having thus secured salvation both for his
aody and his soul, the pilgrim now passes on into
;he Church of Our Lady, which stands in the
centre of the convent buildings. If it is some
jreat feast day, such as the Feast of the Rosary,
le will find the building a dazzling blaze of
ight and colour. Every altar in this vast
:hurch gleams with its halo of a myriad waxen
:andles. Every inch of wall-space is painted in
flowing colours ; every niche is occupied by the
igure of saint or angel with garments of corn-
lower blue and flaming scarlet, overlaid with
leavy gilding. Everywhere on walls and
Vaulted ceiling are pictures and frescoes, painted
vith a wealth of symbolism and ornament.
The Virgin Mary, the apostles, prophets, kings,
md patriarchs ; Abraham, Isaac and David,
he angel Gabriel, Adam and Eve, Jephthah,
^elchizedech and Elias, all claim attention along
vith the supreme sacrifice of the Christ. Jacob's
^adder appears behind the altar of St Rosary,
md St Meinrad, the holy founder of the abbey,
idorns that dedicated to himself; and raised
Lbove all, as the crowning glory of the edifice,
s Kraus' enormous " Assumption of the Virgin "
vith its garlands of cherubs' heads.

In a dark chapel beneath the gaudy dome is
reasured the image of Our Lady which has made

207

Switzerland

the fame of Einsiedeln. It is but a piece of
rudely carved pine wood, but the devout have
clothed it in rich brocades and decked it with
costly jewels. For to the wealthy pilgrim from
foreign shores, just as to the humble peasant
woman of the mountains, this statue is the
vehicle through which the ever-interceding
Mother of God has chosen to rain down benefits
on humanity. And so the space in front of the
grating that half reveals the image in its shrine
is always thronged with worshippers, and the
walls are hung with wax dolls, knots of white
ribbon, tawdry paintings and inscriptions —
all the offerings of gratitude.

Highly treasured by the Benedictine brothers
is a magnificent chandelier of gilded bronze,
a gift from the Emperor Napoleon III. Many
European monarchs have presented their por-
traits to the monastery, but alas ! what are
portraits when princes formerly bestowed fiefs
and fertile lands ? For now, after a career
of temporal glory, Einsiedeln has returned to
the purely spiritual pre-eminence of its early
days.

Saint Meinrad was the founder of the abbey,
a holy, quiet-loving man who would have fled
in horror from the crowd of pilgrims now wor-
shipping at his shrine. He belonged to the
haughty race of the HohenzoUern, two members
of which at that time ruled over the great

208

Einsiedeln

Benedictine monastery of Reichnau, on the
island in the Zeller See. Here the youth was
sent to school, and here he decided to pass his
( life, taking the Benedictine vows. Meinrad
possessed uncommon fascination of manner, so
when, in spite of his youth, the monks of Bol-
lingen begged him to become director of their
studies, no one grudged him the distinction.
On his journey thither the courtly monk called
to pay his respects to the Abbess of Zurich, who,
pleased with his unusual modesty and learning,
presented him with a statue of the Virgin and
her Child. This he carried in his arms to his
new abode and never parted from it all his life.
He was wise in this, for the image was miraculous,
and destined to become famous throughout the
length and breadth of Christendom.

But Meinrad was consumed with a passion for
solitude, and finally he escaped from the monks
of Bollingen, determining to seek salvation in
the wilderness. Then, always clinging to his
Madonna, he crossed over the lake, and sought
a refuge on Mount Etzel. But the young
anchorite was beloved of all the mountain folk.
They crowded after him to his retreat. And
Meinrad, in true mediaeval fashion, more eager
for the luxuries of his own soul than for the
happiness of his fellow-men, fled once more before
their anxious solicitude. Further and higher

he clambered, until a dense and gloomy forest
o 209

Switzerland

of fir-trees seemed to give promise of security.
This was known as the Sombre Forest.

Now before he had journeyed far in the
Sombre Forest Meinrad found a spring of
water. Here he decided to make his dwelling.
For himself he built a hermit's cell, and for the
Virgin and her Child a chapel, the best that he
was able. For years and years he dwelt among
the woods and mountains, like some stern St
John the Baptist, and here he tamed two ravens,
which were his only friends. But escape from
the people he could not, and he was forced to
receive, and counsel and confess his flock as he
had done before. And the great holiness of
Meinrad became a word all over the country-
side.

But it was whispered also among those that
hated the Church that the holy man had heaped
up great treasures in his cell. And one day two
robbers broke in on him and murdered him for
the sake of his riches, but they found nothing
save the image of the Virgin and the Child.
Then, terrified, the robbers fled ; but the ravens
of Meinrad pursued them wherever they went.
And finally they came to Zurich, and the birds
beat their wings against the window of their
chamber until they got in, and settled down on
them and could not be persuaded to let them go.
But the magistrates of Zurich inquired into the
mystery, and the news of the foul murder got

2IO

Einsiedeln

abroad, and the two ruffians confessed their
crime. " Then," adds the mediaeval chronicler,
without a word of comment, " were they both
broken on the wheel." The seal of the abbey of
Einsiedeln shows these selfsame ravens, so who
shall say the story is not true ?
I Many hermits and anchorites were drawn to
the Sombre Forest by the news of Meinrad's
death. Some Benedictine brothers rebuilt his
cell. Their first abbot was Eberhard, who in
934 built a church for the sacred image. The
unusual sanctity of the place merited some
supernatural manifestation. The legend runs
that Conrad, the Bishop of Constance, who was
to consecrate the chapel, entered it the night
before to prepare himself by prayer for the
::eremony. A strange sight met his eyes. A
Light filled the building that proceeded from
10 earthly lamps or candles. Clouds of incense
rolled up from censers swung by angels, and
ningled with a sound of heavenly music. At
:he altar, attended by the four evangelists, stood
:he Christ himself, and behind him St Peter
md St Gregory. The consecration of the
;hurch was celebrated by the Godhead.

All night and morning Conrad remained in
)rayer, but the monks thought he had been
Ireaming when he told them of the wonders
le had seen. So at their desire he began the
onsecration rite. But immediately the build-

211

Switzerland

ing was filled with a great voice, which cried a S
out warningly : " Cessa, cessa, frater f Capellami
divinitus consecrata est ! " Such was the proud
origin of the convent of Einsiedeln. A dozen
successive popes have affirmed the truth of the
legend, and devout peasants still believe it
among the mountains of Schwyz. Cannot one
still obtain plenary indulgence, through a visit
to the shrine of Our Lady of the Hermits ?

This divine baptism at once gave the founda-
tion of Einsiedeln a prestige among the monas- |i
teries of Switzerland second only to St Gall.
It was dowered with wealth and lands, and by
1247 its abbot had become a Prince of the Holy (i
Roman Empire, with a seat in the Diet. Like
the lay princes he had a household composed of
the highest nobles in the land. He claimed —
and asserted — a sort of sovereignty over the
people of Schwyz, under the protection of the
Count of Rapperschwyl and the Duke o\
Austria.

But this suzerainty, while marking the heigh
of the abbey's power, was also the cause of it:
decline. Perpetual quarrels arose, as every
where in Switzerland, between monks an(
peasants over conditions of land tenure. Con
stant complaints went from Einsiedeln to th
Holy See concerning the enormities committo
by the men of Schwyz ; how when the cattl

of the monastery strayed into fields which th

212

^fti

'k\

Einsiedeln

I Schwyzers claimed as their own, they never

, came back again to the convent. The peasants

I definitely repudiated all allegiance to the monks.

, To the Emperor alone, they said, did they owe

! homage. But the Emperor, rejoined the holy

I men, had bestowed charters on the abbey that

leased to them the lands of Schwyz. The

I quarrel became more bitter, and blood grew

hotter. Then, when the peasants of the forest

cantons first began to feel the sprouting of their

wings in the years before Morgarten, Johannes,

Baron von Schwanden, became abbot. Speedily

' he earned for himself a hateful reputation among

the peasant folk. He got the Bishop of Con-

i stance to lay the whole country under an

'interdict. The church doors were closed, the

bells were silent ; children and aged folk were

refused the help of religion at their launching

into this world or the next. Marriage was

I proscribed ; no longer could the sinner claim

absolution at the confessional.

|i The anger of the Schwyzers blazed out. The

Empire of which the forest states formed part

was in hot dispute between Ludwig of Upper

Bavaria and Frederick of Austria. Einsiedeln

was under the protection of the latter house, but

I the intrepid farmers did not fear, or did not

realise, the forces that they were raising up

'against themselves. In 1314, on the Feast of

the Epiphany, they gathered together in a pro-

213

Switzerland W

IIie(
jxes,

lost,

:tiei

testing throng under the presidency of their
Landamman, Werner Stauffacher. Red-hot
oratory inflamed their passions. Grasping such
weapons as they had, a force of angry men surged
out into the night, and set off, shouting for hberty,
on a three hours' march to Einsiedeln. A

The expedition was marked by discreditable'
excesses. It has left its epic, written by Rudolf
von Rudegg, the rector of the seminary of the
monastery. The monks first learnt their danger
from the wild pealing of the chapel bell, but by
that time it was too late to make any organised
defence. All were taken prisoner. But while ^"'^'
some of the attacking party had been fighting, /°^'^
others had discovered the abbot's cellars. They 'i™'
gave themselves up to drunken rioting ; they ™
profaned the holy places, scattered the sacred W>
relics. Those soberer than their brethren searched '' ^^^^^
for the supposititious charters but found no "i^^H
trace of them. To make up, they tore the books 'M^'^
of the brothers from their bindings and made a ' ™se
great bonfire, on which they flung papal bulls, .^^
accounts and everything that came to their ''^^p
hands.

Rudegg in his poem makes no mention of
Stauffacher, which is strange, considering the i ^^^ li
position which that magistrate occupied in the ' ^^^ m;
state. He describes feehngly the desecration of "lli
his much-loved convent : ^lie ir

" Our monastery is in the hands of the spoilers. §ioupe

214 1

Einsiedeln

The doors of the holy places are mutilated with
axes, the sacred vessels and the garments of the
priests are seized by the sacrilegious, who trample
under foot and scatter to the winds, not only the
ashes of the noble martyrs, but the consecrated
host. ... At daybreak the enemy surround the
belfry (whither the monks had sought refuge)
armed with crow-bars and blazing torches for
the assault. The convent porter takes up his
place on the narrow stairway, which, he tells the
fathers, he can hold single-handed with an axe,
as the enemy must advance only one at a time ;
but they refuse this armed defence, as not meet
for their order, and recommend themselves to
God. . . . The enemy swarm in, but we receive
them with a courteous greeting. ' Have no
fear,' says one of them, ' our general has com-
manded us only to secure your persons and seize
your goods.' Silently we follow them, glad that
this is the worst. We are lodged in a separate
house which proves our prison. But up comes
a further detachment, and finding the cellar
and pantry bare, grow clamorous, demanding
loudly their share of the booty and the prisoners.
1 Pandemonium reigns. But at last the leader
calls his men to order and gives directions for
the march.

" The aged and the sick they leave behind.
The monks, the servants and the cattle are
grouped in separate companies. The word to

215

Switzerland

march is given, and the cavalcade moves forward.
The women of the village, when they see their
husbands driven off with us, fill the air with their
waihng, and call on Heaven for help. As we
clamber up the Katzenstrich we are all overcome,
and I would fall off to rest, but one of the guards
bids me to clutch on to his mule's tail.

" After the mountain is crossed we reach
Altmatt, where a halt is made. The convent
serving-men on payment of a ransom are set
free. But we are kept close prisoners in the
house of Werner Abackes for five days. Then
comes the Landamman to escort us on the road
to Schwyz. They force the monks to walk,
though the priests are allowed horses. But
the choir-master, who is clad in his robes of
ceremony, cannot get his enormous boots into
his stirrups. So his legs must dangle, and in
this absurd manner we pass through crowds of
jeering peasants into the town of Schwyz. We
stop at the Town Hall, while the Mayor and
Councillors quarrel over our fate. While the
argument continues the local priest gets the
Landamman's permission to give us a good meal.
At nightfall the magistrate lets us know that
Peter Jocholf is to be our gaoler, which alarms us
greatly, for he is the biggest scoundrel in the
town and knows no mercy. Nine of us in all
. . . are left with him. We sup on tears, and as
we rise from the bare board, the women, more

216

Einsiedein

vindictive than the men, assail us violently.
' This fate is better than they deserve ! These
monks who unjustly have excommunicated us
and taken the food from our mouths should
suffer as we have suffered, and bear the punish-
ment of their crimes ! '

" For six weeks are we lodged in our narrow
prison. . . . We beg leave to send a messenger to
treat for our release. To this the Landamman,
after taking counsel with the elders, agrees.
Our ambassador Rudolf von Wunwenberg seeks
out the Graf von Toggenburg and the Graf von
Hapsburg, and secures their mediation with
the Landamman of Schwyz. Three days after
his return, the assembly is called together;
our pardon is pronounced ; and once again we
are at liberty ! The priest who in our affliction
eleven weeks before, had bidden us to his table,
now makes a splendid banquet to celebrate our
joyful deliverance. We eat freely of his meat
md wine — he has an excellent vintage ! — and
then set out to seek our Abbot. So overcome is
he to see us alive as well, that tears roll down
lis cheeks. He makes a great feast for us and
Dasses round brimming flagons. And so restored
>vith meat and wine, we pass the hours in joy
md mirth."

So after all the affair ended happily for the

nonks, for the Schwyzers, in spite of their orgies

, )n the night of the raid, seem to have acted with

Switzerland

a lack of brutality quite marvellous in the four-
teenth century.

But all the brothers of Einsiedeln were men of
wealth and high connection, knights and barons
of the Empire. Such an outrage could not pass
unavenged. And so the chivalry of Austria rode
against the forest state, only to break their
spears in vain among the rocky defiles of Mor-
garten.

The glory of Einsiedeln was now departed.
The monastery exchanged the proud position
of overlord of the Schwyz for that of humble
dependent, and in 1798 its territories were
formally annexed by the canton. The same
year the ancient abbey fell a prey to the French
invaders, who rifled the treasury and stripped
the altars of everything they could bear away.
Terror struck the hearts of the villagers, for
they feared that their Black Virgin had been
desecrated by the hands of the spoiler. But
no ; the monks had fled to Tyrol, bearing with
them the palladium of Einsiedeln, and back in
triumph came the statue, when the invader had
left the mountain fastnesses.

During the anti-clerical outburst of the middle
decades of the nineteenth century, the monastery
of Our Lady of the Hermits was treated by the
Swiss Government with greater favour than most
of the religious foundations. But even this last
of the Benedictine houses lived in fear of trans-

218

Einsiedeln

formation into a school or barracks, so the far-
seeing descendants of St Meinrad laid up
treasure for themselves in a foreign country.
In far-away Indiana they built a farm and
church as a place of refuge, and prepared to fly
with their treasures if need should arise. But
the necessity never came ; the day of persecu-
tion passed away ; and after a thousand years
the Virgin with her Child, given by the Abbess of
Zurich to the young monk of the courtly bearing
and the yearning eyes, still holds her court in her
stately home among the mountains and the pine
woods.

219

THE BERNESE OBERLAND

With less of historic and human interest than
Tell's countr\^ the Bernese Oberland remains
for most lisitors the pearl of S\\itzerland. It
is the whole country in miniature. Lakes, large
and small, gleam at the foot of dark gxeen hills,
savage gorges open upon valle^^s of \'ivid
emerald, dazzHng glaciers reach down from
mountains of majestic form, torrents dissolve
over the edge of precipices in a fairy mist — here
you find all that you have come to Switzerland
to seek. Alas ! the glorious vision is too often
veiled by the rain which keeps the land so green.
Even in the midst of summer you may awake
morning after morning to find the clouds have
descended from the mountains to settle on the
town. The cheerless salons of the hotel are
encumbered all day with tourists of all nation-
ahties \'isited onl}^ by misfortune. The Enghsh
play bridge and read Tauchnitz editions with
obstinate composure. The French and GermanSj
after the manner of their kind, loaf round, doing
nothing except smoking and watching the English.
Occasionally it is possible to whip up the poly-
glottic crowd into some round game or the like
tomfoolery ; but gloom resides on every brow.

220

The Bernese Oberland

Brave men and women sally forth in mackin-
toshes and tell you on their return that they
have enjoyed a grand tramp up the mountain.
. You do not believe them, and you do not believe
■ the hotel proprietor when he tells you that the
1 rain is bound to finish next day . You call for your
bill, pack your traps, and place the Alps as quickly
as you can between you and the Oberland.

Had you waited a day longer your eyes might

have opened on a cloudless sky and on a land-

1 scape fresh and glistening as a dewdrop, where

^ the snow seemed fresh fallen on the mountains,

the ice washed clear of all impurity, and the

grass grown anew during the night. Long before

I noon the ground is dry, the mountain paths hard

beneath the feet. Flowers burst open on every

side and a new-bom population of butterflies

hovers over the roaring sea-green torrents.

Nowhere can the sun of Switzerland smile more

brightly than in the Oberland after a week of

tears.

For all its damp and treacherous climate,

therefore, Interlaken is never likely to want for

( visitors. It is Europe's favourite window on

, the Alps. From beneath the walnut-trees of

, the Hoheweg all eyes are upturned towards the

'' Jungfrau and her esquires, the Monk and the

Ogre. Mountains are what people come here

i for, mountains what they talk about. Dinner

at the hotels is Uable to violent interruption by

221

Switzerland

the guests' rushing frantically to the windows to
witness the far-famed alpenglilh ; having seen
which, they pick up their overturned chairs,
remove the traces of the soup spilt on their
garments, and resume their meal, purring with
satisfaction the while. These enthusiasts never ^f^^"
depart without buying one of those artfully
contrived views on to which the light may be
reflected through red paper so as to produce
a tolerable resemblance to the alpengluh. The
coquettish little shops of Interlaken abound in
rubbish of this sort ; in little wooden bears, in
carved models and toys of all descriptions, and
in alpenstocks on which the tourist may have
painted or carved the names of all the mountains
he has climbed — in the funicular railways. Ex-
cept these shops and its long fagade of preten-
tious hotels, Interlaken has nothing to show. It
is built almost entirely of wood ; but its houses
can withstand the violence of the tempest and
the snowstorm, and in the suburb of Unterseen
you may see cottages brown with age. Behind
them foams the Aar, connecting the lakes of
Thun and Brienz on each side of the town. They
were continuous till the plain between them on
which Interlaken stands was formed by the
deposits of the Liitschine. The name of the
place was first borne by an abbey of Austin
canons founded about 1130 under the protec-
tion of the lords of Eschenbach, who also owned

222

The Bernese Oberland

,the village of Unterseen. At the beginning of the
fourteenth century these domains came into
the possession of the Hapsburgs, who in 1386
■were forced to surrender them to Berne. In 1528
the abbey was secularised, and the greedy re-
public secured all its lands, including Brienz,
Grindelwald, and Lauterbrunnen. The monas-
tic buildings, a good deal restored and pulled
.about, still stand near the eastern railway
.station, and accommodate Catholic, Lutheran,
and Anglican worshippers, according to the
tolerant practice of German-speaking states.

From the walls of the abbey in front of the

, main street and its hotels stretches that level

.^reen meadow, which still imparts so delightfully

rustic an air to this swarming tourist resort.

, There the cows can still wade knee-deep through

:he lush herbage and mingle the tinkle of their

1 ,3ells with the strains of the Viennese orchestras

,.n the gardens of the hotels. The gardens them-

I selves are often things of beauty, planted with

.vallflowers and pansies, campion and phlox.

[n the morning there is a dewy freshness about

[nterlaken such as I have fancied must have

! :lung to our old English spas, like Epsom and
Tunbridge Wells, when people of quality used

, ;o camp by them in tents.

r Even the lazy man who has no wish to climb
nountains may amuse himself here. He can
.aunter across to the wooded Rugen and watch

223

Switzerland i

attrac

for a'

ffet, ■

tlrouj

sentn

wlien

very

Eflglis

the to

curra

horse

the squirrels playing hide-and-seek with the
checkered sunbeams. Then, refreshed with milk
from a local cow or good Bavarian beer, he
may climb up to the ruined tower of Unspunnen,
which is supposed to have been the home of
Manfred. Byron in his Journal does not mention
this castle ; but his account of his Oberland
visit, though vivid, is meagre, and might have
been written on a telegraph form.

" Left Thoun," he says, under date 22nd Sep-
tember 1816, " in a boat which carried us the
length of the lake in three hours. The lake small ;
but the banks fine. Rocks down to the water's
edge. Landed at Newhause ; passed Inter-
lachen ; entered upon a range of scenes beyond
all description or previous conception. Passed
a rock — inscription — two brothers — one mur-
dered the other ; just the place for it. After a
variety of windings came to an enormous rock.
Arrived at the foot of the mountain (the Jung-
frau, that is, the Maiden) ; glaciers ; torrents ; one 1%
of these torrents nine hundred feet in height
of visible descent. Lodged at the curate's. Set i ™'
out to see the valley; heard an avalanche fall ™^^'
like thunder ; glaciers enormous ; storm came
on ; thunder, lightning, hail — all in perfection,
and beautiful. I was on horseback ; guide ■%
wanted to carry my cane. I was going to give it 'j'" P
to him when I recollected that it was a sword-- y^"^!
stick, and I thought the lightning might be '^^fal

224

which
It is:
betwe
dredi
here(
hi
iayh
ffiuri

The Bernese Oberland

attracted towards him ; kept it myself ; a good
deal encumbered with it, as it was too heavy
for a whip, and the horse was stupid and stood
still with every other peal. Got in, not very
wet, the cloak being stanch. Hobhouse wet
through. Hobhouse took refuge in a cottage ;
sent man, umbrella, and cloak (from the curate's
when I arrived) after him. Swiss curate's house
very good indeed — much better than most
English vicarages. It is immediately opposite
the torrent I spoke of. The torrent is in shape
curving over the rock, like the tail of a white
horse streaming in the wind, such as it might be
conceived would be that of the ' pale horse ' on
which Death is mounted in the Apocalypse.
It is neither mist nor water, but a something
between both ; its immense height (nine hun-
dred feet) gives it a wave or curve, a spreading
here or condensation there, wonderful and in-
describable. I think upon the whole that this
day has been better than any of this present
excursion."

Most people who have walked up the vaUey
of Lauterbrunnen wiU share the poet's pleasant
memories. Down the fir-clad cliff to your
right trickle the streams which baptise the
valley, whispering the secrets of the upper air ;
to your left brawls the Liitschine, separating
you from pastures spangled with dandelions.
Far ahead the clouds veil the Jungfrau and then
p 225

Switzerland

withdraw a pace, revealing the whiteness of her
brow. The Staubbach — the pale horse's tail-
waves in the wind and casts at times long
shadows on the mountain wall. You may push
on past the village up the wild gorge of the
Trummelbach, to the very hem of the Virgin's
robe, and count the rainbows ever changing
in the triple falls ; or climb the steep path to
Miirren, that you may stare the mountains boldly
in the face. Perhaps you will be lucky enough
to see a great rainbow overarching the Virgin
Queen, as the halo in some bright Byzantine
painting crowns a saint; and you should still
be fit for the long walk down the valley to
Interlaken, once beguiled for me by the chance
companionship of a party of jolly Russian
students who sang the ^'Marseillaise" as they
strode along.

To Grindelwald most people ascend now by
rail, going by the Wengern Alp and Little
Scheidegg and returning by Burglauenen and
the valley of the Black Liitschine. That you J I
will much appreciate the sublimity of the scene,
travelling this way in August or September, I
very much doubt. The little trains are crowded
to the point of suffocation, chiefly, as it seems
to me, with fat Germans and their red-faced
stertorous wives, who feed each other with
sausage and always possess themselves of the
window-seats. Instead of the snowy dome of

226

> « • >

» 9 I. ' " '

-J

the]
ton's
upwa
\h{
jour
Barro
ih
miles
time
from
of til

ambi

Littli

tread

But

Attl

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awari
only
Difice
Dc
mind
pass
attl
Tliis
tya:

The Bernese Oberland

the Jungfrau, the smooth, rosy dome of a Teu-
ton's bald head is generally the limit of your
upward vision. Alight, therefore, at the
Wengern Alp station and for a moment drink
your fill of Alpine air and Alpine beauty. The
narrow black trench beneath you is the valley
of Lanterbrunnen. Opposite you, perhaps two
miles as the crow flies, is the Jungfrau. From
time to time blocks of ice detach themselves
from the lower glaciers and fall with the sound
of thunder into the Trumletenthal below. Our
ambition enkindled, we push still higher, to the
Little Scheidegg where we beard the ogre by
treading on the very skirt of his white robe.
But we have no reason to boast our temerity.
At this very point begins the railway which will
presently carry you to the very summit of the
Oueen of the Oberland herself. Thus with a
ring of fire and iron man has wedded the fair
Jungfrau, to whom such a judge as W. M. Conway
awards the palm among the Central Alps, her
only rival being not a mountain but the mag-
nificent Aletsch glacier, far behind.

Down through the withered woods that re-
minded the blighted Byron of his family, you
pass to Grindelwald, not a very beautiful spot,
at the foot of the Eiger and the Wetterhom.
This verdant, chalet-strewn basin is inhabited
by a race of gruff, money-grabbing, church-going
hinds, and is infested in summer by Church Con-

227

Switzerland |

gresses. It is a flourishing winter resort, also,
and, as most people know, is much less cold than
Interlaken lower down. For all that, I am not
much in love with Grindelwald, and like it less
than any spot in the Oberland. After a visit
to the nearest glacier, the day-tripper generally
returns to the station and by dint of severe
fighting secures a place in the train to Interlaken.
One summer I took a bicycle to the Oberland,
and have often thought that the rest it then
enjoyed was largely responsible for its remark-
able longevity. I used to take it with me in the
train, but the rain always prevented me from
returning astride it, as I had intended. However,
I rode upon it right round the Lake of Thun — an
easy afternoon excursion. This lake is hardly
as beautiful as the Vierwaldstattersee, nor has
it any particular historical or legendary interest ;
but from its banks and its surface you certainly
get unrivalled views of the Alpine pageant.
A light mist hid the base of the mountains across
the bright green water from my gaze ; at what
seemed an infinite distance the peaks glistened
in the pale sunlight, and I could have fancied
that I beheld the bulwarks of some far aerial
world. A huge bird flew out and remained
poised for five or six minutes motionless above
the water ; then he seemed to fly straight into
the sun — as they say the dying eagles do. I
thought this was, in fact, an eagle, but I am told

228

The Bernese Oberland

that this bird has almost disappeared from the
Alps.

There, at the north end of the lake, is the gate-
way of the Oberland. It is still dominated by
I the castle of the Counts of Kiburg, who, as we
know, mortgaged the town to Berne, for no very
.creditable reason. This erstwhile stronghold is
of the usual Burgundian type, and rises nowa-
days above a wilderness of greenery. Part of it
iis a prison, the rest a museum full of banners
won at Sempach and Morat and less honourable
trophies. There is, for instance, a curious
collection of hangman's cords, each of which
'has choked the life out of a man. This is a
' heritage of the bad old days ; they seldom
I strangle men in Switzerland now, and the record
for halters has long been held by the Anglo-Saxon
1 countries, with Russia a good second.

Thun has a stirring, even a poetical past, but
the old parts of the town tend to dinginess and
elsewhere the builder has been too aggressively
at work. The favour of strangers does not mean
:much to Thun, for it boasts a brisk trade and
: some manufactures. It is, besides, the seat of
the federal military academy ; and if Swiss
cadets are not as aristocratic and opulent as
the young gentlemen of Sandhurst, that they
have in so commercial a country adopted so
unremunerative a profession shows that they
must have some money to spend.

229

Switzerland

From the south-west shore of the lake the
prospect is less splendid, but the way is pleasant,
through gardens, plantations, and pretty villages.
Near Spiez you pass the chateau of the once-
powerful Erlachs of Berne. At Leissigen, near
my journey's end, a surprise awaited me. Call-
ing for a drink at a tiny rustic inn, I was served (||t
by a trim waitress whose auburn hair and fresh
complexion inspired me at a venture to address
her in English. My suspicion was correct, and
she answered in the unmistakable accents of a
countrywoman. I remarked on the pleasant
nature of the surprise in such an out-of-the-way
spot. " Yes," she replied rather guardedly,
" I don't suppose you expected to be served by
an English girl here." She then asked me
abruptly if I knew the Trocadero in London.
Learning that I did, she told me that she had
served behind the bar there for some time.
" Then what on earth are you doing here ? "
in my curiosity I rudely blurted out. She
smiled mysteriously, answered that she liked
the place, and disappeared into an inner room,
obviously unwilling to continue the conversa-
tion. There may have been no romance about
the explanation, but I confess I should have
liked to know how that typical West End bar-
maid came to find herself drawing beer for Swiss
cowherds and boatmen in a village in the Ober-

land.

230

(Q
0)

The Bernese Oberland

The Beatenberg on the opposite side of the
Thunersee recalls, on the contrary, a disappoint-
ment. We went out one hot morning, my sister
and I, to visit the cave of St Beatus, whose story
I may as well relate in the terms in which I first
read it in Murray's Guide :

" St Beatus, according to tradition, was a native
of Britain, who coming from Lucerne converted
the inhabitants of this part of Helvetia to
Christianity in the first century a.d. Being
minded to take up his residence on the shore
of the lake, he fixed his eyes upon a grotto, well
suited to a hermit, but at the time occupied by
a dragon. The monster, however, was easily
ejected, simply by hearing a notice to quit ad-
dressed to him by St Beatus. The anchorite was
in the habit of crossing the lake on his cloak,
which when spread on the water served instead
of a boat. The historical St Beatus was an
Irish missionary who in the 5th century con-
verted the dwellers round the Lake of Lucerne ;
the dragon incident comes from the history of
St Beatus of Vendome, whose history was
arbitrarily blended with that of the Swiss St
Beatus in the i6th century by the reformer
Agricola."

Up the steep face of the mountain we toiled
to pay our devotions at the shrine of the wonder-
working hermit, through magnificent woods
which somehow afforded no shade. It seemed

231

Switzerland

a long way to the cave, and we began to wonder
whether we really wanted to go there. At this
moment a signboard greeted us with the in-
spiring legend : " Hotel Kleinschwein — St
Beatenberg — Englisch Gingerbier." English
ginger beer ! at such a moment the appeal was
irresistible. We already felt it foaming round
our lips. Panting like steam engines, puffing
and breathing hard, we clambered on, struggling
up that slope with frantic energy. It is a fairly
steep ascent at any time, as those who have
ascended in the rack-and-pinion railway can
judge ; under such torrid conditions the climb
was a feat of endurance of which we are to this
day proud. At last, faint with thirst and ex-
haustion, we fell over the crest, and staggering
down the long street of St Beatenberg, collapsed
into the basket-chairs of the hospitable Hotel
Kleinschwein. " You have here English ginger
beer ? " I inquired nervously. " Certainly,
sir." My sister and I exchanged glances of
delight. " Two bottles immediately." We
were glad the girl took so long to fetch them,
that we might gloat over the effervescent joy
in prospect. The bottles came — they were un-
corked— they fizzed — they foamed — we raised
the glasses to our lips — we put them down
again — the ginger beer was unsweetened !

The poignant disappointment of that moment
lingers yet. On the whole continent of Europe,

232

The Bernese Oberland

English ginger beer can be obtained at only one
spot, and there it is unsweetened.

I have never allowed this painful experience
*to embitter my memories of St Beatenberg,
through which, in search of less exotic refresh-
ment, we presently proceeded. It is simply
a row of hotels and chalets about two and a half
miles long, built on a broad shelf above the lake,
in full view of all the monarchs of the Oberland.
It is a paradise of birds and flowers, and seems
perpetually bathed in sunshine. Its glories
have been chanted enthusiastically by Canon
Rawnsley, who stayed there during " flower-
time " for a longer time perhaps than I should
care to do. The isolation of this high ledge —
its tedious elongation — would tire the patience
of restless folk in a very few days ; but in winter
the crisp cold stings all your limbs into move-
ment and you ask for nothing better than these
steep slopes and slippery paths.

The country behind the Niesen, forming the
western part of the Oberland, has been opened
up to tourists only of comparatively recent
years. It is not very long since the railway
was extended along the Simmenthal, past
Zweisimmen and Gessenay into the Gruyere
valley and the Lake of Geneva. The valley of
Adelboden is described in Murray's Guide for
1891 as little frequented. Nowadays it is one
3f the most popular winter resorts in Switzer-

233

■^\

Switzerland

land. It owes its success to its sheltered situa-
tion opposite the Wildstrubel and its exceptional
amount of sunshine. Here it is quite possible
to walk about in summer rig in the depth of
winter, four thousand five hundred feet above
the sea. The village lies in a valley opening
off the Kanderthal, up which you go, past the
resplendent Bliimlisalp, to the Gemmi Pass.
This, Mr Coolidge has ascertained, is first
spoken of in 1252 under the Romance name of
** Curmilz " or " Curmyz." " As early as 1544
we have a most thrilling account of Sebastian
Miinster the geographer, of his traverse of the
pass, and of the horrors of the bad path from
Leukerbad to the pass. Later we read that by
this bad track a horse could only carry half a
proper load, while every cow on its way to the
pastures required a man to itself." For these
reasons the name was supposed in the dark ages
of philology to be derived from the Latin word
for groans. The pass yields in dreariness only
to the Grimsel. The path constructed in the
eighteenth century by Tyrolese labourers is one
of the most remarkable in Switzerland. It is
carved like a winding stair in the face of the
rock, and may not be descended on horseback.
Near the spot where Madame d'Arlincourt was
killed, falling from a mule, in 1864, are the
remains of a hut to which a hermit used to
approach by swarming up a pole.

234

The Bernese Oberland

An hour and a half's descent from the summit
of the pass brings you to that queer place,
Leukerbad or Loueche-les-Bains, which is a
long way off the town of Leuk in the Rhone
valley. It is a very old spa which owes a good
deal to Cardinal Schinner, the bishop of Sion.
The baths, which are of the warm fiat-iron
variety, are still a good deal frequented, and are
conducted very much on the lines of those which
Coryat and Montaigne saw at Baden in Aargau.
You are admitted (if merely a spectator) to a
gallery, and on looking down behold two or
three dozen heads emerging from the water,
on which are floating wooden tables bearing
books, coffee, and refreshments of all sorts.
These extraordinary beings are clad in thick
woollen robes and mufflers, which give them the
appearance of dancing dervishes, or dangerous
lunatics. Upon your appearance, a collecting-
box is reached up to you at the end of a pole,
while the bathers howl, " Pour les pauvres." If
you do not respond to this appeal, you will find
water squirted over you with deadly force and
precision by the dexterous bathers. They are
of all sorts — fat, bald-headed fathers of families,
nice young ladies, priests, officers, hale and
hearty peasants, battered roues ; but they all
seem to be enjoying themselves and to take very
kindly to an aquatic existence. "It is not a
little amusing," intelhgently remarks an eye-

235

Switzerland

witness, " to see people sipping their breakfasts
[possibly eating them, too ?] or reading up to
their chins in water — in one corner a party at
chess, in another an apparently interesting tete-
a-tete ; while a solitary sitter may be seen re-
viving in the hot water a nosegay of withered
flowers. The temperature of the bath is pre-
served by a constant supply of hot water,
which the patients drink at times."

The Lake of Brienz, on the other side of
Interlaken, sombre in its setting of dark wooded
mountains, is less picturesque than the
Thunersee. If a thunderstorm is brewing, its
neighbourhood infects one with a profound
melancholy. But on a clear day it is a jaunt
of unalloyed pleasure to the Giessbach falls —
seven cascades leaping down in succession from
the height of the mountain, over smooth green
turfy terraces, overshadowed by a forest of firs.
By night these falls are illuminated. The effect,
though so artificially produced, is of magical
beauty, almost equal to that of the noonday
rainbows.

It was on the path leading from the water's
edge that I first saw a marmot. He was begging
for a blind man. He looked like a great fat
rat, with his pathetic pleading eyes, his quiver-
ing muzzle, and fierce whiskers. He begged
most prettily with his fore-paws, and ate nuts
as daintily as a squirrel. I thought him a most

236

> i» > ) 4 4 It

The Bernese Oberland

lovable beast — as rodents usually are. Mar-
mots are more often heard than seen in a wild
state, and announce the approach of a human
by a loud, shrill whistle. '^They live," says
'Mr Howard V. Knox, "in colonies of varying
numbers, but, in summer at least, each burrow
is inhabited by a single family. Sometimes, but
not always, the same burrow is used as a summer
and a winter home. The change from summer
to winter quarters, wherever it takes place,
involves a descent to a lower level. The
animals prepare for winter by carrying into their
sleeping-room a quantity of dry grass, with
which the floor is entirely covered, so as to
provide a comfortable couch for the two or three
families that usually club together at this season.
About the middle of October the burrow is
closed up from within by a closely packed wad,
composed chiefly of hay, which, however, is
ij placed not at the entrance of the burrow, but at
a distance of one or two feet therefrom. In the
snug home thus carefully prepared the whole
party, numbering from five to fifteen individuals,
sleep away the long winter months, unless they
are dug out by some ruthless hunter."

The ruthless hunter may be compared to the
cads who dig foxes out of their earths and wash
their children's faces with their blood.

According to Victor Tissot, the marmots never
stir out of their burrows till they have satisfied

237

Switzerland

themselves that no danger is in sight. The
command of the party is entrusted, as with the
chamois, to an old female, and while the young
ones frisk and crop the Alpine flowers, their
elders keep watch. Mrs Margaret Vaughan,
daughter of John Addington Symonds, captured
a marmot alive after a brisk engagement, of
which she gives a most spirited account. Having
driven him into a ledge, she forced him to take
refuge in a bag hastily improvised out of a
petticoat and hairpins. Then at midday,
8th July 1889, " two heated damsels were to be
seen toiling along the Davos-Dorfli road, one
bearing slung over her shoulder, a mysterious
striped bag, the contents of which wriggled
furiously and weighed twelve Swiss pounds."

Brienz, at the east end of the lake, is the
back door of the Oberland, and thence you
ascend through Meiringen over the Brunig pass
to Lucerne. Meiringen is beautifully situated
and has been burnt down more often than any
town in America. Whether the people cook
their Christmas dinners in a general conflagra-
tion, as the ancient Chinese roasted their pork,
or whether the men smoke their pipes in bed,
I do not know, but the place is the despair of
the insurance companies. Yet close at hand
there is a volume of water great enough to
extinguish all the fires in Hades. The Aar cuts
its way through a mountain, forming a defile,

238

The Bernese Oberland

I a mile and a quarter long. This gorge might
.well be taken for the approach to the hell
dreamed of by the envenomed Florentine. The
walls of rock rise sheer up from the water,
overarching here, receding there ; they bulge
terrifically above your head as you clamber down
the iron gallery clamped to their sides ; they
retreat and advance, engulfing you in a great
witches' cauldron, a cavern green and dark well
suited to be a dragon's lair ; then far above you
a ray of sunlight penetrates the chasm, and
makes magic play with the damp white mist sent
up from the torrent hissing and frothing far
below.

Near at hand there are other streams which
tumble down into the valley over the grand
Reichenbach falls. There is the Alpbach cas-
cade, too, alike unable to save Meiringen from
the burning. The valley behind is the Hasli-
thal, leading to the Grimsel. It is inhabited by
a hardy handsome race, whose fathers settled in
the valley of the upper Rhone. The women are
supposed to be prettier, or, as one author un-
kindly puts it, " less plain " than the rest of
their compatriots. For my part, I think in-
justice is often done to the Swiss in this respect.
There are plenty of pretty faces to be seen in
Switzerland — among the shopgirls of Berne and
Lucerne, for instance, and in the towns of the
canton Ticino. In the St Gotthard express I

239

Switzerland

have met at wide intervals two of the handsomest
people I have ever seen — a federal officer going
from Zurich to Andermatt, and a charming girl
of sixteen or seventeen travelhng from Bellin- j
zona to Zurich. But the peasantry of Switzer-
land are undoubtedly as plain of face as of
speech. They work too hard. They eat too
little, and expose themselves too much. The
women are old at thirty. They take no interest i
in their appearance and have no reason to do so. i
Marriages, as elsewhere on the Continent, are j
affairs of convenience, and the ugliest girl stands
as good a chance of a rich husband as does a
pretty one. The cold airs and Calvinism have
put out the fires of passion in Switzerland. No
young Swiss would think of running off with his
master's wife or daughter — if he ran away with
anything, it would be with the cash-box.

,y:

240 L

•)•,•■> t >

. .J.

Teec
parts
sluti
noun
Botfo
access
where
stadt.
Mvi
with I
theK
loun
a pop
contei
cheesf
beaut

b?tl

seldoi

Bit
audi

CANTON GLARUS

The canton Glarus is one of the least frequented
parts of Switzerland. Like Uri and Valais it is
shut in on all sides but one by almost impassable
mountains ; but unlike them, that one side is
not formed by any famous lake or river. The only
access to the canton is by a narrow opening
where the Linth issues from the Lake of Wallen-
stadt. Glarus consists of one large and beauti-
ful valley, the Grossthal, rich in pasture-land,
with the two tributary glens, the Klein thai and
the Klon, burrowing right into the heart of the
mountains on either hand. Here there dwells
a population of over thirty thousand souls, who
contentedly manufacture printed muslins and
cheeses, while ecstatic visitors rhapsodise over the
beauties of the scenery, and the lofty sentiments
it must awaken in the dwellers in its midst.

Wallenstadt, though less than ten miles in
length, is one of the most beautiful of the Alpine
lakes. It lies in the cradle of the mountains,
seldom disturbed by the presence of the man
from Cook's. Its dark green waters mirror the
rocky masses that rise sheer up from its margin.
But these clear, placid waters are treacherous
and dangerous to navigate. Benvenuto Cellini

Q 241

Switzerland

has left us an account of his exciting passage
across the lake from Wallenstadt to Weesen, in
the course of a journey that he undertook with
two apprentices from Rome to Paris.

" When I saw the boats on the lake I was
terrified," he naively owns, " because the said
boats are of fir wood, not very large and not
very substantial, and are not closely fitted to-
gether nor even pitched ; and if I had not seen
four German noblemen with their four horses
embarking in a similar one, I would never have
embarked in mine ; rather would I much sooner
have turned back again : but I thought to my-
self according to the folly I saw them committing,
that these German waters would not drown folks
as do ours in Italy ! Those two young men of
mine, however, said to me, ' Benvenuto ! It is
a dangerous thing to embark along with four
horses/ And I replied to them : ' Don't you
notice, cowards, that those four noblemen have
embarked before us, and are going on their way
laughing ? If this were wine as it actually is
water, I would say that they were going cheer-
fully to drown therein ' ; . . . This lake was
fifteen miles in length and about three in width ;
on the one side was a very high and cavernous
mountain, on the other it was flat and grassy, i
When we had gone about four miles on it the
said lake began to be stormy, so that those men
who were rowing begged us that we would help

242

Canton Glarus

them to row ; so we did for a while. I made
signs to them that they should run us to that
shore opposite ; they said that it was not
possible for there was not sufficient water there
to float the boat, and that there are certain
shallows upon which the boat would immediately
go to pieces and we should all drown. . . . When
I saw them thus dismayed, having an intelligent
horse, I arranged the bridle upon his neck and
took one end of the halter in my left hand. The
horse . . . seemed to perceive what I wanted to
do, for, turning his head towards the fresh grass,
I wanted him swimming to draw me also with
him. At this moment there arose so great a
wave from the lake that it broke over the boat.
Ascanio, crying out, ' Mercy, my father, help
me,' turned to throw himself upon me ; where-
fore I clapped my hand to my dagger, and told
them to do as I would show them, for the horses
would save their own lives so surely that I hoped
I should also escape by that means ; but that if
he threw himself upon me I would kill him. . . .
Midway down the lake we found a little track of
level ground where we could rest, and upon the
level ground I saw disembarked those four
German noblemen. The boatmen would not
allow us to disembark so I said to my young
men, ' Now is the time to make some proof of
our quality ; therefore draw your swords and
compel him to set us on shore.' This we did

243

Switzerland

with great difficulty. But when we were landed
we must climb two miles up that mountain,
more difficult to scale than a ladder. I was
fully armed in a coat of mail, with big boots and
a fowling piece in my hand, and it was raining,
as God alone knows how to send it. Those
devils of German noblemen, with their little
hand-led nags, performed miracles, but our
horses were not up to this business."

One slipped on the precipitous path, and falling
down the mountain side was killed ; the other, slip-
ping, wounded itself on the point of a lance. Had
not the German noblemen taken pity on them and
sent them help, poor Benvenuto and his friends
would indeed have been in a sad plight. At
length, however, they got food and shelter ; the
wounded horse was tended, and Cellini continued
his journey into France singing and laughing
with his apprentices, and in a strange interval of
piety, thanking God for his escape.

But voyagers on the lake have not always been
equally fortunate. They will still tell you at
Wallenstadt, in tones of horror, of the boat, laden
with wine and salt, which went down in a sudden
storm in 1574, when fifty good merchants of
Grisons were drowned.

To the geologists the mountains round the Lake

of Wallenstadt are a paradise of wonder. They

are characterised by extraordinary " folds,"

where the natural strata of the rocks lie crushed

244

Canton Glarus

and broken beneath inverted strata, in which
the older rock formations He next the surface and
the newer ones are deeply buried. It is as if some
giant had seized the ancient mountains and in his
anger crumpled up their summits and ground
them deeply into the foundations. But to my
layman's eye the mountains are but mountains,
and though Wallenstadt is beautiful, the whole
of the canton is before me.

Leaving Weesen, the railway passes through
a rocky gorge into the great central valley of
Glarus. On the rights Glarnisch rears its snowy
head, glittering in the clear air and sunshine, the
most impressive peak in the whole canton. Its
summit is well worth a visit on account of the
huge glacier that unrolls in plains of ice between
the rugged crags and overflows on to the smoother
surfaces below. Round the lower slopes cluster
great masses of beech-trees with their pink
sheaths and leaves of delicate green, until, as they
push farther up the mountain, they lose them-
selves in the shadows of the conifers.

Glarnisch has a sinister reputation for its
avalanches, which thunder down a sheer 5000
feet, bringing destruction in their train, in a veil
of blinding snow. And less remarked though
scarcely less wonderful are the " snow-flags "
encountered on this and the surrounding sum-
mits. Often when no breath of air is stirring in
the valley the wind on the mountains lifts up a

245

towl
their
bene;

Switzerland |

great column of snow and whirls it up into the
air in great spirals. Sometimes the snow dis-
appears into the clouds, sometimes it spreads
out like a pall of smoke, sometimes it shoots
about like frozen flames, but always it is a
beautiful and weird phenomenon.

Nafels is the first village at which we make
a halt. There is a fine old manor-house here '^"^f
built in the florid Renaissance style, and trea- ^^^
sured by the natives as a masterpiece. But the "^
interest of the spot is almost entirely historical,
for Nafels played a part in the growth of Glarus
similar to that of Morgarten in Schwyz.

The name of Glarus is derived by Murray
from St Hilary of Poitiers, the protector of
Fridolin, who converted the district to Chris- ^ %
tianity. To trace the process of derivation will ^'
occupy many a tedious railway journey. This, ^^^^
like so many of the Swiss cantons, was originally j "'
dependent on a religious foundation — the Bene
dictine nunnery of Sackingen, on the Rhine. |
But Austria, the bogey of Mediaeval Europe, I ^¥
early acquired proprietary rights. In 1352, ^^^^
Glarus entered the Swiss confederation, and in ; W
1380 Austria determined to strike a final blow ' '™
for her vanishing supremacy. Treachery de- Ft
livered Weesen into her hands, and from this Aust
point of vantage, 6000 Austrian troops were soutl
thrown into the canton. At Nafels they made ^lin
their attack. Glarus was cut off from her allies. . itlit

246

on t
marl
elevf
iillai
iai

itsc
mi

Canton Glarus

But a band of 600 grimly determined men
held the surrounding heights. The Austrians,
to whom defeat had taught no wisdom, brought
their cavalry into the valley, only to be crushed
beneath a well-directed volley of stones and
boulders showered down at them by their in-
accessible foes. Austria now judged it wise to
temporise, and in the following year agreed to
give up all pretensions to her ancient feudal
rights in return for a sum of money paid down
on the nail. The memory of this victory is
marked by an obelisk opposite the church and
eleven stones, placed at intervals through the
village. In the churchyard of Mollis, the twin
village of Nafels across the river, are buried the
fifty-four heroes who fell in the great victory.

Past Netstall, that clings for support to the
overhanging crags of the Wiggis ; past the gorge
of the terrible Lontsch, which at times leaves
its channel and tears over the countryside with
vindictive fury, and you come to Glarus, the
capital of the canton. You notice with surprise
that the little town is new and modern, and if
you inquire the reason you will hear a tale of
terrible disaster.

For an enemy more to be dreaded than the
Austrians or French is the " fohn," the terrible
south-west wind that sweeps at times through
the valley. One day in May, just fifty years ago,

it Ht a fire in Glarus, which presently consumed

247

Switzerland

five hundred houses and property to the value of
three hundred thousand pounds. The mountain
snows glowed with the reflection of this roaring
sea of fire, and the dreadful crimson alpengUch was
visible as far away as the Black Forest. But help
and supplies were not denied to Glarus in this
terrible hour. The cantons, French and German,
remembered their fraternal duties, the federal
device, " All for one, one for all," which, as an
English lady remarked with commendable
moderation, was " very nice " of them.

The conflagration made a clean sweep of the
historical monuments of the town, among which
may be counted the church wherein Ulrich
Zwingli first celebrated mass. The chalice used
on that solemn occasion is preserved in the new
church. But the sole interest of this cantonal
capital for strangers lies in its situation at the
foot of the Vorder Glarnisch, a peak of beautiful
shape, resembling at a distance a fountain turned
to ice. Opposite rises the Wiggis ; in another
direction the appropriately named Schild cleaves
the sky.

Amid such sublime scenes, the people of the
little town flock to the factory and regulate their
lives by the horn and the hooter, much like
Lancashire folk. We hear the usual groans that
divorce among them is frequent, that wives are
fond of gaiety, and homes neglected. In all
probability they are all much the better for

248

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Canton Glarus

mingling even a scant measure of pleasure and
passion with their sordid lives. Their lot is
certainly better than that of the peasant who
will deny himself, his wretched wife, and his
children, food, sleep, rest, and recreation rather
than lose a minute from grubbing up potatoes
and feeding swine.

When the gramophone and the electric theatre
cease for a moment to charm the industrious
townsfolk of Glarus, they make holiday in the
Klonthal, a romantic valley to the north of the
Glarnisch. We seem here to penetrate into the
land where it is always afternoon. No wind
stirs the leaves, not a blade of grass trembles,
there is never a ripple on the surface of the dark
green lake. Far down into its abysses seems to
penetrate the mighty mountain, mirrored to-
gether with the heavens above it in these clear
depths. Here Alps and sun are never tired of
contemplating the reflection of their own beauty.
Nature never devised a more beautiful looking-
glass than this little lake in the heart of Glarus.
Suvorov, by the way, is said to have sunk his
war chest in it when routed by the French.
You drink a glass of milk to the genius of the
place, and press up the valley. It is on fine days
pretty well thronged with people on an outing
from Glarus and with mountaineers about to
attempt the not very difficult ascent of the
Glarnisch. In winter the valley is deserted

249

Switzerland

except on Sundays, when the frozen surface of
the lake draws skaters by the hundred. The
ice is of unusual purity, and so clear that a
newspaper can be read through a slab a foot
thick. Its exportation has become an important
industry. " Strange and picturesque and com-
parable only to the hurry and scurry of an ant's
nest, is the scene presented " — says one who has
witnessed it — " when hundreds of men with
saws, picks, poles, ladders, sledges, and horses,
are busily employed on the slippery surface of
the ice in the midst of this lonely snowed-up
Alpine valley, the thermometer registering 15
to 25 degrees below freezing-point, so that the
workmen's bread freezes hard in their pockets
and the wine in their bottles is turned into a
cylinder of ice. Then there is the business of
transporting the ice. In good winters from two
to three hundred waggons are employed daily
in conveying the blocks of ice into the valley.
The traffic is so regulated that twice a day all
the vehicles go in single file from Netstall and
Glarus to the lake, and return in the like order
unbroken. Thus in the space of one hour you
see the entire caravan of three hundred ice-
laden waggons drawn by horses, cows, or mules,
pass by in a seemingly interminable procession."
From Glarus the railway runs up the valley
of the Linth to Stachelberg, a pretty watering-
place at the foot of the great mountain mass of

250

Canton Glarus

I the Todi. Thence you may travel by a bridle-
path over the Klausen Pass into Uri. The

I boundary lies a considerable distance short of
the summit of the pass, and for this reason.
In the autumn of 1092, the two cantons (as we
now call them) fell out over the matter of the
frontier. It was finally agreed that two men
should start running at cock-crow from Linthal
and Altdorf towards the pass and that the point

"' of their meeting should be the boundary. Each
side strove to gain the advantage over the other
by getting its bird to crow first. The Glarus
bird was overfed^ and showed no signs of waking
though the sun had risen. At last, long after
the Uri man had started, he opened one eye,
lazily flapped his wings, and crowed languidly.
The Glarus runner was off like a shot, seeking by
frantic spurts to make up for the delay of the
drowsy bird. Half way down the Frittneralp,
he met his competitor. The Uri man was, how-
ever, a true sportsman, and consented to allow
the loser another chance. He would yield as
much of the distance he had covered as the
other man could carry him. With a mighty
effort the runner from Linthal bore his rival up
the mountain as far as the Scheidbach. There
he fell dead, and there the boundary remains to
this day. " Although the issue was so tragic,"
caustically remarks a Liberal of Glarus, " it has
not been without advantage, for since that time

251

Switzerland

our people have learned to set their watch at
least half a century in advance of that of their
fellow-countrymen at Altdorf."

Three and a half miles above Glarus, at the
little town of Schwanden, the river Semft falls
into the Linth. It waters the idyllic Kleinthal.

Having once penetrated into this glen, the
traveller feels himself as much cut off from the
outer world as in the happy valley of Prince
Rasselas. There is little communication with
the rest of the canton, for the lower part of the
valley is narrow and tortuous, with a rise of
850 feet in less than three miles, and a sudden
bend that hides the approach as completely as
the vanishing door in the fairy story. Beyond
the circle of brooding mountains lies the world
of steamships and hotels, but in this narrow
strip of green pasture-land men move placidly
about their business, often the prey of a pitiless
nature. Enthroned above the solitude the eagles
build their nests.

They cling firmly to their old beliefs and
superstitions, these lonely mountain folk.
They have an interesting demonology of their
own. Above the village of Matt is the Heiden-
loch, a stalactite cavern six feet high. Here the
dwarfs buried their treasures in an iron chest,
and a black dog keeps guard over them day and
night. It is said that in former days a white
sheep was driven once every year into the cave,

252

Canton Glarus

and used to emerge some two miles farther off
with a fleece of deepest red. What fiery ordeal
the poor beast had gone through, the legend-
mongers will only hint at. The subterranean
passage which undoubtedly exists is also said
to have been used as a refuge by Christians in
the days of their persecution, though we are
told of no miraculous transformation of their
complexions. Until the last few years a curious
custom was still kept up. On the Monday before
Ash Wednesday, the young men would go with
torches to the Weissenberge. A fire was lighted,
and small circular pieces of wood with sharpened
edges made glowing in the flames. Then with
rhymes, that seem to be a relic of some old
litany to the sun-god, they would hurl their
missiles, like falling stars, into the air to drop
into the valley below.

But the Kleinthal has by no means escaped
the touch of a steam-driven civilisation. For-
merly the inhabitants used to swarm in summer
over the neighbouring districts, picking up the
most casual livelihood and making themselves
a nuisance. But to-day tall factory chimneys
stretch up from amongst broad-spreading maple-
trees and glowing clusters of alpenroses. From
the bowels of the mountains comes the hollow
clang of picks and hammers, indicating, not
some Vulcan's forge, but the presence of valuable
slate quarries.

253

Switzerland

To these quarries the Httle town of Elm, lying
at the upper extremity of the valley, owes a
melancholy notoriety. It has always suffered
from floods and avalanches, but before 1881 it
was to outward appearance a model of Arcadian
happiness. In September of that year a sudden
shower of rattling stones warned the inhabitants
that something was amiss. In great haste they
began to move their cattle and household goods.
Another deafening volley crashed down upon
them, and then the whole face of the rocky
Tschingel, undermined by quarrying, fell in.
As though struck by an earthquake, the mountain
gaped asunder. Huge boulders split off and
came crashing down, enveloped in a dense cloud
of rocky debris, with an occasional flash of fire.
Ten times more terrible than an avalanche the
stream of solid masonry swept on, filling up the
narrow valley, grinding to powder everything
that opposed its progress. The bed of the river
was instantly choked up and the rising waters
threatened to engulf whatever of the village the
falling mountain had spared. Herds of cattle
were extirpated; a hundred and fifteen people lost
their lives and eight more were only saved by a
whirlwind that lifted them up bodily and carried
them to a place of safety. An enormous sum
of money was at once subscribed for the benefit
of the survivors ; but the little village still lies
half in ruins beneath a mass of rock and rubbish.

254 -,

Canton Glarus

Above Elm, and overlooking the rushing
itorrent of the Sernft with its magnificent water-
ffall, rises the rugged mass of the Sardona,
crowned with its glittering ice-fields. The
Tschingelhorner grins fantastically with its
savage rocky teeth, known locally as the Twelve
Apostles. Near the summit is an extraordinary
fissure that penetrates the mountain to the
Grisons side, known at the Martinsloch. Its
breadth is 46 feet, its height 72 feet on the
Glarus side, falling to 49 feet in Grisons, and
twice a year the sunshine streams through on
to the church tower of Elm. Farther to the
south, great mountain masses sweep round the
■ Kleinthal valley, piling up crest above furrowed
crest, until they culminate in the snowy majesty
of the graceful but gigantic Hausstoch with its
fine summit lost in wreaths of cloud.

255

THE LOWLANDS OF SWITZERLAND

All Switzerland is not Alpine nor even mountain-
ous. The five cantons extending along the left
or south bank of the Rhine from the Bodensee to
Bale belong to the plain, and with them might
be included parts of Soleure and St Gall. They
contain a third of the whole population of
Switzerland, and Bale and Zurich, its most
populous towns. Here the wealth and industry
of the country are concentrated. The whole
territory is German in race and language, and
accounts for the predominance of the Teutonic
element in the confederation.

The race problem in Switzerland has been
investigated by able native writers, and lately
by M. Albert Dauzat, who states his conclusion
in his book, " La Suisse moderne." He speaks
of the rapid Germanisation of the Bernese Jura,
and estimates the immigration of German Swiss
into the French-speaking cantons at one hundred
thousand persons. Against these can be set
only fifty thousand French Swiss settled in the
German or Italian cantons. In the canton
Neuchatel are whole German-speaking colonies
of recent growth. The birth-rate, too, among
the Teutons is very much higher than among

256

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The Lowlands of Switzerland

their Latin neighbours. On the other hand, the
French, resisting assimilation themselves, tend
to assimilate and to absorb these alien colonies.
As in Belgium — that other battle-ground of
tongues — the educated classes, whether of Latin
or Teutonic origin, prefer to speak French — a

I tendency encouraged of course by the influx of
tourists and the very necessities of the hotel-
keeping business. A movement to write the
hotel menus in German, by the way, broke down
because only three foreigners out of ten could
understand them. At Neuchatel, according to

|: M. Dauzat, the deliberations of a German Swiss
society called the Griitli have now to be con-
ducted in French ; the same paradox may be
noticed at Lausanne. In the German towns
near the linguistic frontier, or of mixed race,
such as Fribourg, Sion, and Sierre, French is the
language of good society. In all parts of the

j; country we foreigners expect officials and hotel
proprietors to speak French, and reserve our
German for the peasantry and the chamber-

Ij: maids. I have noticed that German railway-

I' men like to be addressed in French, whereas in
the French cantons no one is proud of speaking
German. The extension of the railway system
has an important bearing on the language
question. While the lines running into the Jura
from Bale and Berne have accelerated the Ger-
manisation of the region, the prolongation and
R 257

Switzerland

increased importance of the Simplon line has
recovered a great deal of ground for the French.
The language of Moliere seems then likely to
hold its own, even though the French race may
lose something of its purity ; but on the other
side, German is fast extinguishing the Romansch
in the Orisons and is now heard in the remotest
valleys of that outpost of the Latin race.

" Switzerland a German province ! " was the
toast audaciously proposed by a Bernese pro-
fessor some years ago. But the cry roused a
tempest of indignation throughout the con-
federation, nowhere else more violent than in the
German cantons. " We cling to our language,"
instantly responded another professor, " but we
are Switzers all ; and we German Swiss have
not much to learn in things German from the
Prussians ! " It is the new Italy and the new
Prussianised Germany of which the confedera-
tion stands most in fear. From the west and
the east no danger threatens ; but the days are
long past since the Swiss sentinels along the
Rhine fraternised with the easy-going, pictur-
esquely dressed soldiers of Baden and Wurtem-
berg, leaning lazily on their old-fashioned arms
at the opposite end of the bridges. Those soldiers
are now alert and aggressive, drilled and uni-
formed like Prussians, commanded from Berlin.
The watch on the Rhine is now strictly kept on
both sides. While southern Germany perhaps

258

The Lowlands of Switzerland

reluctantly conforms to the Prussian model, the
republic cherishes the old German traditions.

" Nowhere," remarks M. Dauzat, " is the
contrast between the two banks more striking
than at Rheinfelden. The coquettish little
Aargau town, whose waters draw numerous
visitors, has been modernised as regards its new
quarters, without any injury to its past, without
touching the picturesque old streets, with their
pointed gables, or the ancient houses massed
in artistic disorder on the banks of the Rhine.
But on the other side, all is in the hideous
Prussian ' modern-style ' — heavy buildings,
loud and crude, in freestone. The ostentatious
display of the parvenu ' good old Germany '
has not only become the prey of militarism but
also of bad taste. The ancient wooden covered
bridge, with its exquisite savour of Mediaeval
archaeology, which spans the Rhine, resting
half way upon an islet, has been studiously
preserved on the Swiss side — German vandalism
has destroyed the other half and replaced it by
an iron bridge ; no doubt a triumph of en-
gineering but the most discordant combination
it is possible to conceive. But the Badeners
are proud of their new bridge and deride the poor
backward Swiss and their devotion to such old-
fashioned lumber. This bridge is a symbol.
The worst of it is that German taste has in more
than one place succeeded in crossing the Rhine."

259

Switzerland

It has done so, for instance, at the ancient
town of Bale, and broken down behind it the
dehghtful old bridge, at the end of which the
Lallenkonig from a window in a tower for many
centuries rolled his eyes and put out his tongue
at the burghers of Little Bale opposite. The
grotesque manikin has been banished to the
museum, and since the annexation of Alsace the
city has bows and smiles for the German border.
It was never much visited by travellers — of the
uncommercial variety — and has less now than
ever to detain them. We all have recollections
of its buffet, of hurried meals between trains, or
of long, dreary waits in the dim morning light in
its vast waiting-rooms. I confess that my im-
pressions of the city have been gained in a suc-
cession of such intervals in all seasons and at aU
hours of the day. I never found much to inter-
est me there, and am not astonished to hear that
the town is the headquarters of Continental
Methodism and the home of many wealthy
burghers. It contains more millionaires (in
francs) , I am told, than any other Swiss city ;
and these affluent persons do not wish, like the
Orientals, to make any secret of their wealth.
Tall modern houses, such as one may see at
Frankfort and Cologne, rise up, gaunt and
glaring, in quaint mediaeval streets. The ancient
Rathaus has been furbished up, and is now a blaze j j^j I
of red and gold — though it is but fair to the

260

Ihei

The Lowlands of Switzerland

Balers to add that this is in accordance with
the original mediaeval design. " Hie frigent

; artes," sighed Erasmus ; and Holbein left its
phiUstine atmosphere for the Court of England.
The hand of the German restorer has been busy
with the roof of the grand old red cathedral, rising

: so much like Strassburg, from a cliff above the
Rhine. The Vandals have respected the chapter-
house where sat the famous council which created
a schism in the Catholic Church and hindered the
union with the Eastern Church. There is not
much else worth seeing in Bale, except the
portrait of Holbein by himself and the " Dance
of Death," wrongly attributed to him. Bale is a
comfortable, thriving provincial town, with not
much animation, and decidedly more German
than Swiss.

Zurich, most populous of Swiss cities, seated
within sight of the mountains beside its wide
haze-bound lake, is more modem and go-ahead
than Bale, and yet clings more loyally to national
traditions. It exults, like Munich, in its hearty
jovial German spirit, exulting in its glorious
past while zestfully providing for the future.
It rejoices in festivals which keep alive old
memories, and loves to see long trains of boys
and girls in old-world garb winding down its

I magnificent modern streets. The new bottles
of Zurich have stood the old wine very well.
There is plenty for the tourist to see here, apart

261

Switzerland

from the luxurious shops and palace-Uke hotels.
The National Museum is one of the most fascinat-
ing institutions of the kind in the whole world,
deserving to rank with the Cluny at Paris and
the Ottoman Museum at Constantinople. Its
collections of old Swiss furniture, costumes, and
war trophies in their fine mediaeval interiors,
make one long for a similar national museum in
England, where only the products of Egypt,
Assyria, Greece, and Italy are deemed worthy
of preservation at the public expense. iVn old
banner taken at Crecy or the battered forecastle
of one of Drake's ships ought to thrill us more
than even the most dignified mummy or the
blandest of man-bulls. Zurich is full of life and
very proud of itself. " See," it says to its
children, " what a past we Swiss have had ; go
out to our factories and engine shops and see
what we are doing now. Are you not proud to
be Zurichers ? " The prosperous city emulates
Florence and Venice in its encouragement of
arts and letters. The Zuricher sticks out his
chest and refers to his city as Athens by the
Limmat. The boast has some justification.
The city counts half the men of letters of
Switzerland among her children. There are two
universities — that of the canton, to which were
welcomed, in the thirties and forties, Strauss
and many professors of light and leading ex-
pelled by reactionary Germany ; and the federal

262

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The Lowlands of Switzerland

polytechnic, the nucleus of a national university.
Russians and Poles abound in the classes and in
the city. They are hardly as safe or welcome
on Swiss soil as formerly. The Swiss have grown
suspicious of political refugees, at least since
the cruel and purposeless assassination of the
Empress Elizabeth in the territory of Geneva.
Just as the murderer avenged on this inoffensive
woman the crimes of her order, so the Swiss in
their panic are now disposed to make high-
minded political exiles, the victims of brutish
tyranny, suffer for the guilt of an isolated
Italian workman. Unfortunately these panics
are not confined to Switzerland, where it is even
less easy than elsewhere to raise the " alien "
scare. But when Tatiana Leontiev shot a
Parisian tourist in mistake for some wretched
Russian bureaucrat, the commercial instincts of
the Switzers were aroused. A few more mis-
takes of this kind and foreign tourists might
boycott the country. Tatiana herself got off
with four years' imprisonment ; but the alarm
her blunder had excited was glaringly illustrated
by the disgraceful and utterly illegal surrender
of the refugee, Vasiliev, to the Russian authorities
in the following year. I can hardly blame a
Polish medical man whom I met at Berne for
refusing to discuss the affairs of his nation while
within the longest earshot of a third party.
The country between Berne and Zurich and

263

Switzerland

the Rhine — the fertile lowlands of Switzerland —
is left very much to itself by foreigners. It is a
pleasant region of thickly wooded hills, some of
which might be called mountains elsewhere, wide
plains, and quaint old-world towns, recalling
pre-confederation days. Over the town gate
of Sursee the double eagle of the Empire still
outspreads its talons. Not far off are the battle-
field of Sempach, watered with the blood of
Arnold, and the fine old abbey of Beromiinster,
where a book was first printed in Switzerland,
The foundation commemorates the piety of
the old counts of Lenzburg, whose castle, re-
stored by its American owner, is seen by the
railway traveller from Aargau to Lucerne. The
line of Lenzburg became extinct in 1173. Their
lands passed to the house of Kiburg, and their
lordship over this part of the Aargau went to the
Hapsburgs, who had already built the castle
bearing their name on a cliff above the Aar
near the ancient town of Brugg. Not much
more than the keep remains of this cradle of the
mighty Imperial race, which owes so much more
to the marriage contract than to the sword.
The castle is more romantic in its site than in its
associations, and overlooks the blood-stained
field of Konigsfelden. There stands the
nunnery of Poor Clares founded by the Empress
Elizabeth and Agnes, Queen of Hungary, in
13 10 on the spot where their husband and

264

The Lowlands of Switzerland

father, the Emperor Albert, was assassinated two
years before. " Accordmg to tradition," says
Murray, " the high altar stands on the spot
where Albert fell. He had crossed the ferry
of the Reuss in a small boat, leaving his suite
on the opposite bank. He was attended only
by the four conspirators. The chief of them,
John (later surnamed Parricida), his nephew —
who had been instigated to slay him by the
wrong he had endured in being kept out of his
paternal inheritance by his uncle — first struck
him in the throat with his lance. Balm ran him
through with his sword, and Walter von Eschen-
bach cleft his skull with a felling stroke. Rudolf
von Wart, the fourth, took no share in the
murder. Although the deed was so openly done,
in broad daylight, almost under the walls of the
castle of Hapsburg, and in sight of a large retinue
of armed attendants, the murderers were able
to escape in different directions ; and the re-
tainers took to flight, leaving their dying master
to breathe his last in the arms of a poor peas-
ant who happened to pass. The assassins all
escaped. A dire vengeance was wreaked by the
wife and sons of the murdered monarch on their
families, relations, and friends ; and a thousand
victims are believed to have expiated with their
lives a crime of which they were totally in-
nocent. Queen Agnes died in the convent,
but her body/'jWas conveyed to Austria in the

265

Switzerland

eighteenth century. Here too were buried many
of the nobles who fell at Sempach. The nunnery
was suppressed at the Reformation and is now
a lunatic asylum."

The Swiss lowlands are rich in castles and
historic sites. Overlooking Frauenfeld, the chief
town of Thurgau, is the castle of the counts of
Kiburg who inherited the lands of the Lenzburgs
and in turn passed them on to the Hapsburgs in
1264. There is another stronghold of the same
house near Winterthur, restored in good taste,
the interior very much what it must have been
when Rudolf of Hapsburg resided here. Arenen-
berg, on the Untersee — a chateau, not a castle —
was the retreat of Queen Hortense and the
asylum of her son, Louis Napoleon. Louis
Philip demanded the Prince's expulsion. The
Swiss, with a courage they have not always dis-
played since, prepared to fight rather than
violate the laws of hospitality ; whereon the
generous Prince left the country rather than
bring disaster on his hosts. Three or four
miles away is the castle of Gottlieben, a good
deal modernised and distinguished by its two
high-peaked towers. This was the prison of
John Huss and Jerome of Prague, and thence,
in defiance of the safe-conduct granted them
by the Emperor Sigmund, they were taken to
their death by fire on a piece of waste ground

outside Constanz.

266

The Lowlands of Switzerland

The great lake of these parts, the Bodensee,
which washes the shores of Switzerland, Austria,
and the three south German states, seems tame
•and colourless to the tourist fresh from the
forest cantons or the Oberland. He lingers by
its fertile^ smiling shores, perhaps, on his way
from quaint Schaffhausen (the town of onions)
and the neighbouring Rhine falls, to the remote
highlands of Appenzell, which every writer on
Switzerland strives to popularise. This is a
country, we are assured, of rare and primitive
simplicity ; and as such should be extremely
uninteresting. The simplicity of which these
writers speak means a hide-bound conformity
to anciently established customs, beliefs, and
modes of thought. It means an archaic arti-
ficiality. The native costumes, which are shock-
ingly hideous, are simply the fashions more or
less general in this part of the world two
centuries ago. As an instance of the simplicity
of these rustics, one writer comments on the
fewness of illegitimate births among them ;
which means, if it means anything at all, that
their morality is based entirely upon civil and
religious ordinances — the mark of a highly-
sophisticated people. Dancing is regulated and
limited by elaborate restrictions, which is just
as well, as it here consists in gyrations rather less
graceful than a drunken bear's. Social inter-
course is confined to the taverns, and is varied

267

Switzerland

only by drinking and card-playing. " The
family circle when left to itself," says an Ameri-
can admirer of this primitive people, '^ is apt to
be a place of much solemnity. It is marked by
silence broken at irregular intervals by com-
fortable ejaculations oi ja I ja ! or so-o ! "

I understand that people are sent to this
Early Victorian canton for the whey-cure, what-
ever that may be. It is also recommended for
sufferers from the simple-life craze. Perhaps
one of these days it will be generally realised that
savages, rustics. Early Victorians, and puritans
depart very much farther from nature than the
emancipated woman and the gay Parisian, who
are often pointed to with horror. People who
crush out all the instincts of human nature,
good and bad, and live by rule, may be excellent
and altogether admirable ; but they are leading
not the simple but the artificial life.

a68

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THE PROTESTANT ROME

Puritanism, entrenched in Catholic Appenzell,
has lost its hold on its ancient bulwark, Geneva.
That one-time school for saints possesses the
fatal gift of beauty (or rather her surroundings
do), and, like the " ruined " damsels of melo-
drama, now goes clad in purple and fine linen.
The example of Voltaire or Rousseau or the
French Revolution may be set down perhaps
as the immediate cause of her backsliding ; but
her corruption was inevitable the moment that
the world awoke to a consciousness of the glory
of her mountains and the charm of her lake.

Yet Geneva, like the betrayed maiden of the
tragedy, still affects to sigh for the respectability
of her upbringing and has yielded somewhat
grudgingly to the wiles of the seducer. When,
as too often happens, the mist has hidden Mont
Blanc, and the Saleve frowns as gaunt and sour
as Calvin's self, you may find Geneva in her
chastened mood in the high town — the old town
— where the houses are dark, tall, and ruinous,
their chambers airless and vault-like. Here
dwelt Knox's saints, and here still dwell their
descendants, the burgher aristocracy. The
Ville-hautains, the people of the lower town

269

Switzerland

call them, not unfairly. The quarter strikes a
chill into the visitor. The shadow of Calvin ■
still darkens its narrow streets and weighs heavy
on the cathedral of St Pierre. The amenities of
the high town, as Edouard Rod truly remarks, :
consist in the fine views obtainable from some
of the mansions, as also from the Promenade de :
la Treille, across the lake, or of the Jura. [

From this famous terrace old Geneva looks ^
down disapprovingly on its new self. Below, on ■
the obviously-named Place Neuve, rides the '
marble effigy of General Dufour, the soldier who •
felled the Sonderbund, and, with it, old Switzer-
land. He looks towards the municipal theatre, \
very much resembling the Opera House of Paris, ■;
The municipal theatre of Geneva ! Even Rous- '
seau told Voltaire that he could not love him, •
since he had corrupted his native city with '
spectacles. And, shameful to relate ! the school '■
for saints has done very well by its theatre. It •
attracts visitors from all parts of Switzerland, '
even from Lucerne and Zurich, and I once found f
my hotel crowded with such enthusiastic play- '
goers. The theatre is open on Sundays.

One wonders, too, what Calvin would have '
said had be caught the frivolous airs proceeding
from the adjacent conservatoire of music ; he •
would have been less profoundly shocked, I '
wager, by the scenes which have procured the
Palais Electoral, close by, the name Boite aux '

270

The Protestant Rome

Gifles. All this is very modern, but not more
po nor more worldly than the pretty Jardin
Anglais, where the blue Rhone issues from the
ilake, and the opposite quarter of the city with
its glaring hotels and crowded quays.

Those who come here, as all sensible people
io, in spring and summer, see only the un-
regenerate or degenerate Geneva ; no contrast
oetween past and present is apparent to them.
But in the depth of winter, the city takes on a
hmereal garment under which Knox himself
night recognise it. Nothing can be more
nelancholy than the straight streets of the new
:own or the " wynds " of the old, pallid and
dlent in the pitiless, stealthy snow. You come
)ut upon the lake shore, and recoil as if you
lad reached the strand of the Polar sea. You
escape into a side street and are dogged by
looded cloaked figures, each one of whom might
)e the ghost of Calvin. It is a relief to turn to
;he Pont du Mont Blanc, where the seagulls
.cream and chatter, disputing desperately with
iach other for the morsels of bread you may
;hrow them. Heavens, how cold it is ! The
sle of Rousseau close by has been altogether
ibandoned by the nursemaids and infants to
vhom it belongs by prescriptive right in milder
easons. You return to your hotel and sit on
he stove for half-an-hour or so, to restore
ensation to your frozen anatomy. If you are

271

Switzerland

wise you will hasten up to St Cergues in the
Jura or to Adelboden or the distant Grisons,
where the rude blasts exhilarate and the tobog-
gans race down the inclines. Geneva is but a
refrigerator.

For long it was the refrigerator of man's soul
as well as body. The history of Geneva makes
a curious chapter in European history. " Led
on by the religious passion which Calvin let
loose upon them," says Edouard Rod, " the
Genevese, till then so jealous of their liberties,
surrendered them to the most pitiless of tyrannies
— that which refuses liberty even to the con-
science, which imposes beliefs and enslaves th(
thought." The citizens who had expelled th(
bishop and revolted against the mild authorit}
of Savoy, suffered a black-a-vised, sour-visagec
fanatic to trample on their necks, to make theii
lives a foretaste of the hell to which he pro
claimed a vast proportion of them were ine\dt
ably and through no fault of their own doomed
John Calvin put out the lights in heaven an(
earth. Man was devoted here below to hard
ships which could not by any possibility redeen
him from damnation in another life. Can om
imagine a creed more absurd ! The magistral
was advised by Calvin that he did not bear th
sword in vain ; and that if he could not sav^
men's souls, he could chastise their bodies. Th
consistory assumed the direction of the life o

272

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The Protestant Rome

3very citizen. Every offence against Calvin's
3wn code of morals was rigorously punished.
A.dultery, it need hardly be said, was punished
oy death. Actions nowhere condemned by the
Bible^ which this sectary professed to take as
I guide, were equally forbidden — card-playing,
nusic, the wearing of plush breeches, eating or
drinking beyond certain narrow limits. It was
;he puritan's paradise and everybody else's hell.
The most atrocious murders were perpetrated
oy these fanatics. Bonivard's nominal wife,
:orced upon him by the consistory, was sewn up
n a sack and drowned, for an alleged infidelity,
A^hich her husband would have approved ;
icrvetus was burnt at the stake at Calvin's
nstigation, for some theological quibble, on the
Place de Champel. Here was bred that narrow
Sabbatarianism, those grotesque conceptions of
norality which have unfortunately infected so
nany countries, not least of all our own. The
;cy blast of Geneva has still power to wither
ives.

In its own citadel the bad old standard has
;one down for ever. If any respect at all is
hown to the old traditions, it is rather because
)f a sentimental patriotism than out of any
relief in them. The Allied Powers in giving the
city the neighbouring Catholic communes struck a
ieath-blow at the old order. Ten years ago the
3alvinists were found to be in a minority in their
s 273

Switzerland

own birthplace. The CathoHcs took a bitter
revenge for the persecution of centuries. The
disestablishment of the Calvinist Church, so long
the State religion, was decreed by the Grand
Council by sixty votes against twenty-three ;
and the decree was ratified on an appeal to the
people of the canton, on 30th June 1907, by a
majority of eight hundred electors. The Pro-
testant Rome fell within forty years of the
Catholic Rome.

The Genevese are free to enjoy themselves.
And if they still show the timid restraint of the
newly-enfranchised, at least they do all they
can to make their town pleasant for the stranger.
The canton swarms with foreigners — not merely
with the French of the surrounding departments,
and our old friends, the English resident abroad,
but with Latin Americans, Russians, Bulgarians,
Turks, Egyptians, and men of every hue and
tongue. It is a favourite asylum of political
refugees ; though here, as at Zurich, their im-
munities have of late years been more and more
limited. Yet here it was that the Young Turk
Movement had its headquarters, here, probably,
that the foul murder of Alexander and Draga of
Servia was planned. The serpent of old Nile
hatches plots by these cold, incongruous waters
for the expulsion of the Khaki-clad oppressors.
The Slavs — who include many dashing girl-
graduates — frequent the university and at tea-

274

The Protestant Rome

time plan conspiracies in the patisseries of the

Rue Mont Blanc. The Latin Americans include

I a few retired presidents and mild-eyed dictators,

■ but are, for the most part, lithe, simian-looking
I lads, passing a few months at one of the numerous
; international colleges. Half the slender revenues
I of their petty states must go to defray the educa-
tion of these students, whose precocity in worldly
matters exceeds their expensively acquired learn-
ing. The Latin father likes his son to sow his
wild oats, but surely thirteen or fourteen years

• of age is too early to begin.

i A queer change this cold, insipid city must be

■ for these lively westerners, from their scorching,
highly coloured native land. The cloudy sum-
mit of Mont Blanc can hardly dazzle the eyes
which first opened on giant Chimborazo lifting
a gleaming silver dome into a sky of eternal blue

' — the Rhone might pass unnoticed by the new-
comer from the Amazon or Orinoco. The belles

I of Lima and Rio exceed in charm, I imagine, the
nice young ladies of Geneva, who are, admits
Edouard Rod, a little preachy ; though, he
gallantly adds, no one minds a sermon from a
pretty mouth. Well, Geneva may after all be a
good introduction to the intenser life of Europe,
as its social life seems to illustrate the transition
of Protestantism into an enlightened worldli-
ness.

275

WINTER IN THE ALPS

Switzerland no longer hibernates. Time was
when, as soon as the hotelkeeper had closed the
door behind the last autumn tourist, he fell to
counting his gains, and then went to bed — or the
Riviera — till the return of spring. The guides
became waiters or boatmen on some summer
shore or kept shop in the towns. The Swiss that
did not migrate with the swallows slumbered in
their burrows like the marmots. Over the
mountain gates of the Oberland, over Lucerne
and Zermatt, might have been inscribed the
familiar device, " Closed for the winter — to be
re-opened next spring with increased attrac-
tions." The foreigners disappeared, or were to
be found only on the sheltered shores of Lake
Lenian. The Swiss were left to themselves ;
rather, each family was left to itself, for in the
remoter highlands there was as little intercourse
between neighbouring villagers as between the
poles. Occasionally the snow-bound peasants
yawned and opened sleepy eyes, and amused
themselves in their seclusion with the pastime
of carving, which has found some favour with
idle young ladies elsewhere. In all the older
chalets you can find examples of native skill,

276

, ^ • * o « «

' '5'

Winter in the Alps

fascinating in their vigour, and simplicity, and
expressive of local tradition.

Outside the towns and the snug villages the
whole land was left to the stars and silence. A
vast white mantle hung from the Alps and Jura,
wrapping the valleys in its folds, covering the
plain with its wide skirts. The torrents stood
still, the glaciers were motionless. All was
white save where the pines peeped out, crouch-
ing beneath their heavy burden of snow, and
where the great lakes expanded in sheets of
glassy green. Over the passes toiled the little
post-cart, and now and again the stillness was
startlingly shattered by the shriek of the in-
domitable railway engine, rushing south perhaps
to the lands of the sun. Who would wish to be
abroad in such a land — the realm of the Ice
Maiden ? The Englishman sunned himself at
Madeira or Cairo, or hugged the club fire. The
Switzer stirred rarely from his ill-ventilated
homestead and cursed the spell which arrested
the flow of foreign gold.

That is all changed now. The English dis-
covered Switzerland in winter, and have wrapped
themselves in its robes to find them warm and
health-giving. Doctors invented the cold cure.
Invalids were dragged from their stuffy firesides
at Bournemouth and Mentone, and sent to get
well or die at Davos. Then it was seen that
Switzerland in winter was a capital playground

277

Switzerland

for the athletic and the frisky. Here you had a
weather which could make up its mind — where
it froze hard and the ice did not thaw as you were
in the act of putting on your skates. Winter
sport ! the Swiss delightedly awakened to the
commercial possibilities of snow and ice. More-
over, here was a decoy for people of leisure and
well-lined pockets, sure at this season of the
year not to be defiled by contact with the slaves
of shop and desk. Sanatoria sprang up like
mushrooms — which in outward structure they
vaguely resemble. Chalets were transformed
into hotels, brand-new hotels were hastily run
up — not always to the delight of the aesthetic
traveller. Now it is quite the thing to go to
Switzerland in the winter — of course anybody
can go in the summer.

Strangely enough, the new-comers had to teach
the natives how to get about over their own
snowfields. The Swiss seem to have been rather
surprised by this unseasonable invasion, and
wondered no doubt what on earth foreigners
could find to do in those regions at such a time
of year. The foreigners soon showed them.
The rude toboggan was adapted by the ingenious
English into a very handy instrument of amuse-
ment. John Addington Symonds, who settled
at Davos in 1880, began the evolution which has
resulted in the bobsleigh and the development
of a recognised sport. Then the ski was intro-

278

Winter in the Alps

duced from Norway. The Switzers threw them-
selves with ardour into the great game. There
was no longer a close time for mountains. Their
highest slopes were now accessible. Valley was
linked with valley. Over the vast snowfield
of Switzerland, up and down the slopes of the
Alps, men and women of all nations g'ide
joyously and swiftly hither and thither. The
once silent valleys resound with the laughter
and cheers of merrymakers, the white mantle
is everywhere dotted with black and swiftly
moving figures. Winter is Switzerland's carnival
time.

It is not carnival, however, for that sad colony
of consumptives at Davos, who may be seen,
when the sun has gone down behind the Schatz-
alp, shivering on the terrace of the sanatorium.
There they sit or lie prone in their invalid chairs,
a piteous company of all ages and nationalities,
muffled up in wraps, and sighing perhaps for
the balmy airs of Egypt and Madeira. No
matter, they have faith in the dry air of the
Grisons, and the longer their doctor exposes
them to the biting cold the more do they believe
in him. Yet they are glad enough when the
signal comes for the return to the warm and
lighted interior of the hotel. Poor people ! one
thinks, why not let them make the best of what
life remains to them in the warm airs of the
south. Many a consumptive has lived long

279

Switzerland

enough to let his infirmity heal itself, it is true,
and while there is Hfe there is hope.

The canton Orisons or Graubunden — the
largest in Switzerland — was the first to find
foreign gold beneath the snowdrifts. It is a
savage mountainous region made up chiefly of
long parallel valleys, some of which are the
highest in central Europe. The twenty-four
inhabitants of the hamlet of Juf live at a height
of close on seven thousand feet above the
sea. Dense forests clothe the mountain slopes,
watered by the new-born currents of the Rhine,
the Inn, and the affluents of the Adda. In these
savage valleys lingers the old Romansch tongue,
once spoken all over the canton. You still see
the ancient Romansch houses with their low
projecting roofs, their massive white walls with
deep narrow windows like the " loops " of a
castle. But everywhere now the German speech
is heard, and the German's red roof and wooden
chalet have become features of the land.

In the heart of the country the far-famed Via
Mala opens up a path from the valley of the
Rhine into the basin of the Po. It is perhaps
the finest of Swiss gorges. To your right,
wooded cliffs confine the waters of the Hinter
Rhein ; on the left a solid block of rock is
crowned by the castle of Hohen Rhatien. We
are here at the door of the defile. Three miles
farther on, for an instant the walls recede, only

280

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Winter in the Alps

to close in narrower than before. The road clings
to the side of the naked rock rising higher and
higher. A bridge spans with a single narrow
arch the black, cold cliffs, for ever distilling the
mountain's tears. Far below the Rhine roars
and foams along the channel which its fury
has scooped out. A stone dropped over the
parapet takes five seconds to reach the floor of
the abyss.

" The valley of the Albula," says a traveller,
*' reserves for us another surprise. Here as in
the crossing of the St Gotthard, the railway has
added to the charms of Alpine travel. The
track passes and repasses in zigzags along the
rocky or wooded wall, burrows in its flanks
only to reappear after a spiral curve, immed-
iately above the mouth of the first tunnel,
traverses and retra verses the valley on light and
aerial viaducts, climbs by drilling into the
mountain, by hanging on to every projection,
and leaving as it issues from each black
cavern, the traveller bewildered — piercing the
village of Bergiin disappearing on his left when
he believed it to be to the right. At last,
puffing, spitting, smoking, the locomotive out
of breath reaches Preda, 1800 metres above
the sea, a charming station, tranquil and
rustic. . . . We are at the entrance of the great
Albula tunnel, between two peaks with great

white patches which dominate all the upper

281

Switzerland <

valley. Six kilometres, nearly on the level and (

at the end of ten minutes the train issues forth i

at Spinas in a different world — the Upper t

Engadine — ' where the bears come from.' " 2

The history of this strange wild region in the i

very core of Europe has been told by the his- i

torian of the Renaissance as he alone could tell t

it. Its outlines may be worth reciting here, t

now that the canton has became the chosen home t

of the modern and up-to-date tourist. Origin- I

ally Celts, the people were Romanised by the I

Romans and less thoroughly Germanised by n

the Franks. The real ruler of the district in the tl

early Middle Ages was the Bishop of Coire, who F

allied himself with the Hapsburgs in the year ' j

1 170. To curb his power, two hundred years ai

later, his episcopal town and several com- bi

munities in the Engadine and Val Bregaglia tl

formed the League of God's House ; which his tt

lordship presently found it prudent to join him- 01

self. Soon after (in 1395) the Abbot of Disentis ts

and the barons of the upper Vorder Rhein jj

valley, formed the Counts' or Upper League, b;

which ultimately gave the whole canton its fa

name. In 1456 the subjects of the extinct b;

counts of Toggenburg formed themselves into I I

ten bailiwicks, federated under the name of the , ^

League of the Ten Jurisdictions. In 1450 this ^

league allied itself with the Gotteshausbund ^

of Coire, and twenty-one years later with the . Jj

282

Winter in the Alps

Oberbund. These two associations entered into
an alliance with the Swiss confederation, and
together they defeated the mighty Maximilian
and forced him to acknowledge the practical
independence of the Grisons. When the re-
ligious troubles began, the Oberbund held fast
to the old faith (Disentis is Catholic to this day) ,
but the rest of the country turned Protestant,
to the undoing, of course, of the bishop. The
beginning of the sixteenth century was for the
leagues as for their Swiss allies a period of
military adventure. In 15 12 they conquered
the beautiful Valtellina and held it down to the
French Revolution. Then ensued a struggle for
mastery between the Engadine house of Planta
and the Bregaglia house of Salis. In the war
betv/een France and Spain, the Count of Fuentes,
the Spanish Governor of the Milanese, secured
the friendship of the Plantas who triumphed
over the rival faction. But in 1618 a Protes-
tant minister named Jenatsch headed a revolt
against the dominant house, and procured their
banishment to Thusis — which was not very
far after all. The Protestants used their victory
badly, especially towards the Catholics of the
Valtellina. In July 1620, the exasperated
peasants rose, and, assisted by Roburtelli, a
kinsman of the Plantas, massacred five hun-
dred Protestant Grisons. The Spaniards and
Imperialists at once overran the valley, and

283

Switzerland

defeated the army of the Protestant cantons
at Tirano. The CathoHc confederates did not
hesitate to send armed assistance to the rebels
of the valley. Now followed a desperate inter-
necine warfare. Pompey Planta was attached
and killed by Jenatsch and the Protestants of
the Engadine. The next year the tide turned.
Jenatsch fled from the country ; returned again,
was again driven out, and in 1629 saw the three
leagues conquered by an Imperial army.

In 1635 the irrepressible pastor reappeared at
the head of a French force. The Spaniards
and Austrians were expelled ; but when the
French refused to confirm the leagues in the
possession of their subject lands, Jenatsch
changed sides, called in the Spaniards and drove
his late allies out of the country.

The strife of factions was not yet at an end.
Rudolf Planta, a son of the murdered Pompey,
struck down Jenatsch at a festival in 1639.
Very slowly tranquillity was restored. The
Valtellina was handed back to the leagues, but
the liberties of the Catholic inhabitants were
guaranteed. Spain reserved the right to send
troops over the passes of the Orisons, and
Austria surrendered all her feudal rights in
the country at the peace of Westphalia. The
independence of the Graubunden was recognised
at the same time as that of Switzerland ; but
it was not till 1799 that the three leagues were

284

Winter in the Alps

amalgamated and at the same time absorbed
into the Helvetic Republic.

The truculent Jenatsch is buried at the
cathedral of Coire, which, by the way, is dedi-
cated to a mythical British king, St Lucius. It
is an interesting church, dating in part from the
eighth century. The chapel of the bishop's
palace is one of the oldest places of Christian
worship, and is embedded in a Roman tower.
Till the year 1806 the Episcopal buildings still
formed part of the Holy Roman Empire, and the
Catholic portion of the town was walled off from
the Protestant and closed by gates at nightfall.
Since those days, the capital of the Orisons has
lost a good deal of its interest for strangers,
though it should be remembered as the birth-
place of one of the few eminent Swiss painters,
Angelica Kaufmann. The valley of the Vorder
Rhein is rather neglected by visitors to the
canton, though the scenery is beautiful and,
by reason of the numerous castles, romantically
picturesque. We pass the castle of Rhazuns,
of which Mr Coolidge has recorded the extra-
ordinary history. Having long been the centre
of a powerful lordship, it was mortgaged in 1475
or 1490 to the lord of Marmols, who exchanged
it in 1497 with Maximilian of Austria for another
domain in Suabia. In 1586 the Hapsburgs sold
the lordship to the Plantas, but bought it back
.again in 1695, to the great disgust of the Rhaetian

285

Switzerland

leagues. By the treaty of Pressburg, in 1805,
Austria ceded Rhazuns to Bavaria — which also
took the Tyrol — but four years later Bavaria
ceded it to France. In 18 15 Austria agreed to
surrender the lordship to the newly-formed
canton, but did not actually do so till 1819.

Tarasp, the other Austrian " enclave," came
into the possession of the Hapsburgs in 1464,
and was sold in 1652 to the Dietrichsteins, who
held it till 1801. Like Rhazuns it was acquired by
France, and not annexed to the Grisons till 1809.

Ilanz, twenty miles above Coire, was the
capital of the Oberbund. Eleven miles farther
on, at the entrance to the village of Trons, is
the sycamore under which the oath was ad-
ministered to the members of the league by the
abbot of Disentis. The abbey still stands on a
terrace above Disentis, where two torrents meet
to form the Vorder Rhein. It was founded, they
say, by an Irishman in the year 614, and must
have been the beginning of civilisation in this
wild region. It presents an imposing air but
it is not the venerable fabric raised by the
missionary, for that was burnt long ago ; and
it has now been converted into a college and a
technical institute. From Disentis it is eighteen
miles over the fortified Oberalp Pass to Ander-
matt in the canton Uri.

The Grisons still holds its own as the principal
winter resort in Switzerland for those in search

286

Winter in the Alps

of health and of the rudest forms of amusement.
Davos had been long " indicated " by the
faculty as a sanatorium, before the lusty tribe
of skaters and skiers poured into the valley and
warmed the hearts of the invalids with their
jollity and vigour. The English skating club
was founded at Davos in 1889. Since that time
the little town has grown beyond recognition ;
it grew, as Addington Symonds tells us, under his
. very eyes. That great writer could not fairly
complain now that life there was monotonous.
The village has taken on much of the character
of Homburg or Vichy. It has splendid hotels
and shops, and a first-rate theatre. It has
three rinks, covering altogether no less than
35,000 square yards. One of these is set
apart for members of the English Davos Club
(English style) and for expert skaters in the
international style. A third rink is for curlers.
There are three toboggan runs, each about two
miles long. These are all served by railway.
Your toboggan is taken by the funicular to the
[summit of the Schatzalp, and thence you have
|the finest crooked snow run down in the world.
It was on the famous Davos-Klosters run that
toboggan races were instituted in Switzerland,
under the patronage of Symonds, with the old-
fashioned Swiss machine. The course, like the
Schatzalp, is two miles long and stiU remains an

almost ideal run.

287

Switzerland

The presence of the invalids at Davos has un-
doubtedly contributed to the rise of the resorts
in the Engadine, that strange convex valley
where it is winter nine months in the year and
three months cold weather. While Pontresina
seems to score as a summer resort, St Moritz
grows yearly in popularity with the devotees
of ski and toboggan. The scenery, as everyone
now knows, is wild, gloomy, and almost Scan-
dinavian in character. The town — it is a
village no longer — of St Moritz stands 6090 feet
above sea-level and 148 feet above the Maloja
Pass. In such surroundings there is plenty to
stir the Viking blood, which must be possessed
in considerable quantities by other visitors than
the English, to judge from the languages heard
on the rink. I suspect that the place attracts a
good many people not much interested in the
sports. Two o'clock tea on the terraces of the
hotels allows an opportunity for the exhibition
of the " latest cry " in costumes in a milieu
apparently designed for eskimos and polar
bears.

The tide of fashion has in fact been largely
diverted of recent years from Nice and Cairo to
these snow-bound wildernesses. Naturally the
rest of Switzerland is on the alert and eager to
share the good fortune of the largest canton.
Winter sport centres are springing up with
amazing rapidity all over the country, thanks

288

• • •

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Si
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o

Winter in the Alps

largely to the intelligent co-operation of the
Swiss railways and hotel people with Cook's and
Sir Henry Lunn. In the Bernese Oberland,
Grindelwald, Miirren, Wengen, and Adelboden
attract visitors ; St Cergues in the Jura, Leuker-
bad in Valais, Andermatt in Uri, and the resorts
above Montreux must be added to the list. Be-
fore long every place which has a summer
clientele will open its doors for the winter guest.

" Heigh-ho ! the holly
This life is most jolly "

lis the unanimous verdict of those that try
'Switzerland at its most inclement season. The
winter sportsman is infected with the enthusiasm
of the Alpine climber. Young and old, the hale
and the halt, take on a new lease of life. We
once met an old fellow of seventy and odd who
had ski-ed over the Albula Pass and had wound
up by the four-miles bob-run from St Moritz to
Bergijn, and he had the heart of a boy intoxi-
cated with a couple of days' open life in frosty
air. Everywhere it is the same story during a
winter holiday in Switzerland. Everyone is in a
genial, devil-may-care mood, with all the worries
of life forgotten. For some weeks at least the
detachment is complete and final. For we are
right in the heart of nature, who is one hour
smiling, sunny and exquisitely beautiful, and
the next, hard and sinister and cold.

T 289

Switzerland

Dulce est desipere in loco. It does no one any
harm to become a healthy animal at times. The
poets who discovered mountains in the nine-
teenth century did their best to ruin them for
ever. Instead of taking them on their merits
they strewed them over with capitals, they de-
graded them into habitations for unseen Pre-
sences all flaunting in trailing skirts of sunset
verbiage. They wedded them to commonplace
moralisings ; they bid us bow our heads, not
before the beauty of the mountains but before an
intangible Something " far more deeply inter-
fused." But with the advent of the ski and the
winter sportsman, a mountain has again become
a mountain and none the less beautiful because
its sparkling stretches of snow allure earth-bom
mortals instead of the inhabitants of some new
pantheon.

Like the excellent captain of the Mantel
piece, the hotel proprietors and sports com-;
mittees try every reasonable plan to make their
visitors happy. Each centre naturally develops
its own tradition. At one place it will be
mainly English, at another German, at another]
Swiss, at yet another cosmopolitan. We English)
appear to have the greatest faculty for amusingj
ourselves. The old myth that we are a reserved]
people, hide-bound by etiquette and convention,;
is not likely to live in Switzerland. For that
matter it is not easy to get away from one's

290 f|

Winter in the Alps

fellow-guests in their snow-bound valleys, so
there is a virtual necessity to make oneself
agreeable. I have before me the programme
of entertainments at one of these resorts. From
i8th December to 31st January there is an
uninterrupted succession of dances, concerts,
games, and amateur theatricals. Fancy - dress
balls on the ice are very jolly — more so, I think,
than the amateur theatricals, which are generally
an advertisement of the goodwill rather than of
the talent of the actors. At Christmas and the
New Year the commune often comes forward
to entertain the visitors. The hotel proprietor,
.it should be remembered, in nine cases out of
ten, is also the mayor. You have an opportunity
of dancing (or trying to) with the buxom and
not very beautiful peasant maidens and of
proving yourself to be a very affable and con-
descending personage. Unfortunately such con-
descension is not as much appreciated among
- these rude Helvetians as it would be in a Kentish
li village.

'' By day the sun shines with the power of
J' summer, revealing the sharp contours and
1 subtle colour-blurs — mauve, rosy pink, and
[i purple — of the white landscape. It is not for
t long. According to the position of the valley
^and the length of the shadow, you can seldom
& count on more than three or seven hours' sun-
ip shine. You follow the sun as far as you can

291

Switzerland

and then seek the fireUght of your inn. The
invaUds remain a Httle longer perhaps abroad.

You go out from among the dancers (a rash
thing to do) and behold the moon at the full
riding through a cloudless blue sky. To see this
from one of the heights — preferably above the
tree line — with the pallid ranges rising in un-
ending series before you, is to revel in a scene of
almost unearthly beauty. For a moment you
might fancy you stood above the mountains of
the moon herself.

292

WINTER SPORTS

. Of all the sports skating is perhaps the most
, popular and the most widely practised. Here
the English are handicapped. For, living as we
do in a climate that but once in a few years
[deigns to manufacture ice for our amusement,
we have little opportunity for practising the
sport. The attainments of the ordinary man
are mediocre, and though most of us can manage
to hobble along, few of our countrymen are
really fine skaters.

This chapter is not intended as a complete
hand-book of athletics. Otherwise I might
write learnedly of the technical differences
between the two styles of skating in vogue in
Switzerland — the restrained, severe English and
the more flexible Continental styles — which are
now disputing pride of place. Then there are
the games, such as hockey and bandy, in which
proficient skaters delight to show their skill.

Wherever there is a hotel or village of any con-
sequence there is a rink. Here, on the payment
of a few francs for the week or month, you may
take your place among the crowd of novices,
experts, and " half-and-halfs," whose skates go
whisthng over the ice. Day after day you will

293

Switzerland

see the same familiar figures. Some are labori-
ously acquiring their edges. Others, having got
them, after weeks of patient plodding, are swirl-
ing round in triumphant pride, perfecting their
first real figures.

Your true skater is born. It is true that he
must be made as well, and the course of training
is long and arduous. But some there are with-
out either the nerve or the strength of ankle to
acquire the smooth and swaying grace and
dexterity of twist that distinguish the really
first-class skater. These form the drifters of the
rinks who crowd round their more skilful friends
and provide that chorus of admiration so neces-
sary as a background for deeds of daring.

In the whole world of winter sport there is

nothing more delightful from the spectacular

point of view than a good rink on a sunny day,

hedged in by mountains whose sharp outlines,

rounded and softened by dazzling billows of

snow, are silhouetted against a sapphire sky. A

thousand rainbow colours flash from the crystals

of the snow. The air is clear and lucent, with a

tang that sends the red blood coursing through

the veins. In this little corner of the world you

drink the wine of life with youth and laughter

bubbling at the brim. Old age grows young

again ; sickness glows into health. It is the

carnival of healthy life — touched with the powder

puff. For an orchestra plays sinuous Viennese

294

• • • . •• • ' •

. " . t . ,■

-J

Winter Sports

waltzes to which the skaters ghde and sway with
a display of pretty ankles above glittering blades.
Or, if you find the dance and music sophisticated,
a flight of siskins racing in their migration
through the valley will probably come to rest
on the branches of the pine-trees, and, pouring
out their little souls in the sunshine, will sing you
a chorus of silvery notes that mingles with the
ringing of the skates. For a brief hour spring
and summer have joined hands with winter ;
but soon the sun will sink behind the mountains,
a bitter wind will whistle up the valley, and you
will be driven indoors to seek the gaiety and
comfort of the hotel.

Skating has a powerful rival in the recently
perfected sport of ski-ing, that bids fair to oust
it from its premier place. The appeal of the ski
is much wider than that of the skate. Everyone
who has tried it and, surviving the accidents of
his noviciate, has become even moderately pro-
ficient, falls a victim to its inexhaustible charms
and possibilities.

The ski has opened up a new world of moun-
taineering to the adventurous spirit. The upper
slopes in winter were once impossible to achieve,
but now passes, peaks and valleys over ten
thousand feet in height are constantly crossed
by the dauntless ski-runner, while even for
those who are by no means past masters in the
art, the lower passes provide exhilarating runs,

295

Switzerland

neither very hazardous nor difficult. But let
me sound a note of warning to the novice.
Though ski-ing is no more dangerous than other
sports, broken ankles await the foolhardy and
the ill-prepared. Look well to your outfit.
Avoid rough woollen outer garments as you
would the smoke-room bore ; see that your
skis are thoroughly sound, and consult a book
or an expert runner as regards foot-binding.

And, secondly, remember that many of the
German visitors whose daring you admire prac-
tise ski-ing for many months in the year. If,
like most British visitors, you can only give a
few weeks to the sport, their feats are not for
you. Do not attempt running on the upper
slopes unless there are some experts in your
party, or else take a guide. Much time and
trouble would be saved if the inexperienced in-
mates of the hotels would join together, and for
a week at least engage a guide instructor.

And now, having loaded you with good advice,
I invite you to join our party assembling at
Wolfgang for the run over Parsen.

Here the Davos train empties its load of ski-
pilgrims, a jolly band, eager, high-spirited, all
bent on reaching the Davos Ski Hutte in time
for the first brew of broth with its accompanying
plates of sausage and sauerkraut.

We set out, a long thin blue serge line winding
our way by judicious zigzags up the great spin.

296

Winter Sports

I On we go and ever on, up and up across fields of
snow, over the mountain shoulder. At last we
reach the hut.

Some have been before us, have fed and gone.
Others come straggling in by twos and threes,
after three, four or five hours of arduous climb-
ing. Some of the novices are almost too ex-
hausted to try the descent ; the more seasoned
are bubbling over with energy and life. There are
tall, strong German girls, rucksack on back, with
fair faces aglow and shapely limbs cased in smart
knickerbockers of blue serge. Their English
sisters, with modesty bred of inexperience, wear
skirts and woollen jerseys. The rough wool, to
which the snow adheres, and the hampering folds
of tweed or serge will come in a little later for
much bad language, expressed or inarticulate.
Next time they will be replaced by a more
serviceable garb, and their wearers will have
learnt how to tie skins to their skis to facilitate
the upward climb.

The compact body of climbers has become a
scattered host. Some, eager to gild their laurels,
set off for a farther climb. They branch off to
the left over the shoulder of the mountain. In
a couple of hours they will stand on the summit
of the Furka, looking down on an expanse of
lesser peaks, a great white sea of frozen billows
stretching into iUimitable space. The rest of us,
less ambitious, push on for another hour to the

297

Switzerland

head of the pass, where the view, if not so subUme,
is yet one of entrancing beauty. For a time we
rest, crouching together behind the cairn, for the
wind is icy cold in these sohtudes even though
the sun is blazing overhead. We fling stones
to swell the rude little landmark in the centre
of the pass. Then when the sun begins to sink
and the first tints of pearly blue steal over the
lower valleys announcing the approach of winter
twilight, the word is given to start.

It is dangerous running for the first mile and
we have to proceed with care, for the wind has
swept away the snow in gusts, leaving great
projecting points of bare and jagged rock. To
break your ski at this stage is to spoil the joy of
the whole descent.

At last we are out of it, on to the smooth fields
of virgin snow. The slope is long and gradual.
Faster and faster we go, gathering speed with
every yard ; the air whistles past your ears ; the
snow flies up into your nostrils ; inside you the
blood is singing — faster and faster !

The first run is achieved with credit, but we
have still many a difficult gully to cross and
many a tortuous bit of course to steer. There
are ignominious falls when suddenly you find
yourself half buried in the snow. But up you
get and shake yourself — it is all so breathlessly
exciting you hardly notice the discomfort — and
in an hour's time you glide gracefully into the

2g8

Winter Sports

valley just as the Alpine night is falling. At
: Kublis we all forgather, and the train takes us
back to Klosters over the last stage of our
journey. We have negotiated one of the most
famous runs in Switzerland, known alike for its
length and safety. We have met with no acci-
dents worth speaking of. We are soaked to the
skin. There are but fifteen minutes to dress.
We thank the gods for the good dinner that is
coming ; and may the souls of the Telemark
peasants, who first invented skis, find rest. And
may we all meet them ski-ing in the Elysian fields !
Running the ski close in popular favour is the
bobsleigh. The humble toboggan was its parent.
But the toboggan of the peasant would hardly
I recognise its sophisticated and highly complex
offspring. The " skeleton " is built on the same
lines and adapted especially for speed on the
artificially formed ice-runs. In bobbing is found
the concentrated excitement of all the winter
sports both in regard to time and speed. For
whereas in skating or ski-ing each has only
himself to consider, here the responsibility is
common to half-a-dozen people. You may feel
quite confident of your own skill, but you can
never entirely trust your neighbour's. Through
stupidity or accident he may upset you at a
critical point ; or, more humiliating still, it
may be through you that misfortune overtakes

your party.

299

Switzerland

But in Switzerland we are greatly daring, and
this element of uncertainty adds a charm to an
already sufficiently exciting pastime. Bobbing
numbers its devotees by the thousand. It is
indeed a beautiful sight to see an evenly-
balanced crew, working in perfect unison, grace-
fully negotiate a corner, or glide over a difficult
patch of ground. But more than any other
sport it requires sure judgment, tense muscles,
a steady hand and eye in the steersman of this
tiny craft and an intimate knowledge of the
course on the part of the brakesman, before 5^ou
can hope to land your crew triumphantly at the
winning post after a four-mile race even a few
seconds ahead of your rivals.

And then pure, gambling, speculating chance
enters so largely into this exciting sport. A
despicable woodcutter's sleigh encountered half
way may upset all your calculations — and in-
cidentally you at the same time ! A novice
shooting across your track may bring catastrophe
to both. A badly turned corner may suddenly
slow you down when going full speed ahead.
You may land on your head or your heels, or be
suddenly buried in a drift of snow. But no one
can resist the fascinations of the bobsleigh, and
seventeen and seventy alike love to crowd into
a glorious six minutes' run enough thrills and
sensations to last a lifetime.

The skeleton on an ice-run is rather different,

300

a
E

Winter Sports

for here you work single-handed and each takes
his own responsibihty. Consequently we hear
less of stupidity and carelessness. Our neigh-
; hours' characters — and our own — are less univer-
sally blackened.

These are the three chief sports of the winter
tourist centres. There are other and lesser ones ;
there is curling, the "roarin"' game at which
Scotsmen love to congregate. There are hockey
and bandy for proficient skaters. And last of
all comes, " tailing," beloved of the middle-aged
and comfortable. As a sport this ranks lowest,
for it depends entirely on the parts and merits
of your horse. The jolly tourist who " tails "
ni behind his animal has nothing else to do but
follow where equine sagacity leads him.

But still in the midst of all these pastimes
some days remain a blank. For sometimes the
snow is too new for ski-ing, sometimes the rinks
are too soft for skating. Then you are thrown
back on the scenery and the distractions of the
II hotel. What is wanted is some public bene-
i factor to invent a new sport that shall be entirely
independent of climatic conditions. Then per-
haps Messrs Cook will raise a monument to his
memory, and tourists in many tongues will call
him blessed.

301

INDEX

A.AR, river, 222, 238

Aidelboden, 233

i'Aft'ry, Comte, 152

-M., 157

i'Albergeuse, Luce, 79

A.lbula, 281

Aletsch glacier, 95

Altdorf, 188

A.lzellen, 198

Amadeus VI., Count, 86

I'Anniviers, Val, 97

Appenzell, 174, 267

Arenenberg, 266

i'Armeis, Jeanne, 70

Aiustria, Duke Leopold of, 136

A.uvernier, 35

•Bachman, Baron de, 152

Baden, 1 12-126

Bale, 174, 260

Barry (St Bernard dog), loo, loi

Bassompierre, Marshal de, 149

Baumgartner, Catherine, 69

Bears, 12

Beatenberg, St, 231

Beatus, St, 231

Beckenried, 200

Bellay, Edouard of, 86

Berchtold of Zahringen, 2

Bernard, St, loi

— dogs of St, 100-105

— Pass of St, lOl et seq.
Berne, i et seq., 151
Beromiinster, Abbey of, 264
Berthier, Marshal, 27
Besler, 189

Bobsleigh, 299

Bodensee, 267

Bonille, Marquis de, 150

Bonivard, Fran9ois, 63 et seq.

Bonstetten, 9

Bovy, Daniel, 75

Bracciolini, Poggio, 118 et seq.

Bras-de-fer, Ulric, 75

Brieg, 85, 93

Brienz, Lake of, 236

Brugg, 264
Brunnen, 159, 186
Buochs, 172
Burgenstock, 171
Burgi, 164

Calvin, 270, 272

Cartigny, manor of, 65, 67

Cellini, Benvenuto, 242

Cent Suisses, 148, 151, 152

Chalamala, Girard, 76-78

Charles VIIL, 148

Charles X., 155

Charles the Bold, 196

Chillon, castle of, 61-72

— Prisoner of {^see Bonivard

Fran9ois)
Cloudesly, William, 194
Constance, Conrad, Bishop of, 211
Coire, 284

Coryate, Thomas, 125
Courtavonne, Catherine de, 70, 71,

Davel, Major, 47
Davos, 277, 287
Drachenried, 182
Durler, Captain de, 151

Eberhard, 211

Echallens, 49

Eiger, 221

Einsiedeln, 201, 204-219

Engadine, 282, 288

Elizabeth, Empress, 264

Elm, 254

Etzel, Mount, 209

Farel, 26, 45
Ferdinand IL, 159
Fluelen, 18S
Francis L, 149
Frederick II., Emperor, 197
French, retreat of, army, 31
Freudenberger, Uriel, 193
Fribourg, 177

305

Inde

Gemmi Pass, 233
Geneva, 66 et seq., 127, 269

— Lake of, 50
Gersau, 184 et seq.
Gessler, 190, 192, 198
Gessner, Conrad, 169
Giessbach falls, 236
Glarnisch, 245

Glarus (canton) 241 et seq,

— (town) 247
Glion, 60
Gottlieben, 266
Grandson, 24
Gregory XVI., 156
Grimsel Pass, 234
Grindelwald, 226, 227
Grisons, 280
Grossthal, 241
Gruyere, 73-82

— Count Antoine of, 76

— Count Michel of, 80

— Count Rodolphe of, 76
Gruyerius, 74

Hapsburg, castle of, 264
Haslithal, Count of, 217, 239
Hausstock, 255
Heidenloch, 252
Helvetic confederation, 181
d'Herens, Val, 98
Hofbriicke, 140
Hoheweg, 221
Hohle Gasse, 192
Hungary, Queen of, 264
Hlittenort, 181

Imboden, Joseph of St Nicholas,

108
Interlaken, 221

Jenatsch, 283
Jungfrau, 221 et seq.

Kappel, 185
Kappelbriicke, 141
Kehrsiten, iSi
Kiburg, Count of, 4

— castle of, 266
Klausen Pass, 251
Kleinthal, 241, 252
Klonthal, 241, 249
Klosterli, 165
Kussnach, 187

Laharpe, 48

Lake dwellings, 35-39

Lallenkonig, 260

Landenberg, 197

Latour, General de, 157

Laufen, battle of, 5

Lausanne, 51

Lauterbrunnen, 225

Leissigen, 230

Lenzburg castle, 264

Leopold of Austria, 201

Leuk, 85

Leukerbad, 235

Liegnitz, Duke Frederick of, 80

Lontsch river, 247

Louis XL, 148

Louis XHL, 149

Louis XVHL, 152, 153

Lucerne, 127-145, 183

— Lion of, 146 et seq.

Lutschine, 225

Maggiore, Lago, 183
Maillardoz, Lt.-Col. de, 151
Marjelen See, 94 et seq.
Majoria, castle of, 91
Martigny, battle of, 84
Martinsloch, 255
Matterhorn, 84
Meglingen, 142
St Meinrad, 207
Meiringen, 238
Milan, Duke of, 148
Mollis, 247
Monch, 221
Monte Rosa, 84
Montreux, 59
Moral, 25

Morgarten, battle of, 201
Myten Stein, 200

Nafels, 246

Napoleon, 89, 90, 152, 1 53
Netstall, 247
Neuchatel, 20, 256
Nidwalden, 174

Oberland, Bernese, 220-240
Obwalden, 174

Pestai.OZZI, Heinrich, 182
Pius IX., Heinrich, 156
Pilate, Pontius, 167

306

Index

'ilatus, Mount, i66 et seq.
'fyffer Ludwig, 139

Uron, 85-S7

leding, 155

leichenau, monastery of, 209

Iheinfelden, 259

Lhodanic Republic {see Valais)

liedmatten, de, 159

Ugi, 164-166

lolls Regiment, 152

lomfahrt, 138

vudegg, Rudolf von, 214

iugen, 224

lutli, 187, 200

lACHSELN, 179

>arnen, 197

iavoy, Count of, 86, 87

ichaflfhausen, 267

ichauenbourg, General, 181

Icheidbach, 251

icheidegg, Little, 226

Schinner, Matthew, 92

ichomberg. Marshal, 147

Ichwanden, Johannes, Baron von,

213
Schwyz, 181, 212 et seq.
>empach, battle of, 172-173
;ierre, 85, 91
)igmund. Emperor, 185
^igrist, 159
jimplon, 83, 89, 258
iion, 85, 91
jixtus IV., 156
ski-ing, 278, 295
ioleure, 177
5onderbund, 28
?piez, 230
^preuerbriicke, 141
itachelberg, 250
italder, Philip, 182
3tans, 171

— convention of, 177
5tanserhorn, 171
^tansstad, 172
Stauffacher, 190, 198

— Werner, 214
5teiner, 198

Stockalper Gaspard, 93
Supersaxo, George, 92

— Walther, 87
Sursee, 264

Swiss Guards, 146 et seq.
Symonds J. A., 278

Tellsplatte, 192
Tell, William, 188 et seq.
Thun, 4, 229

— Lake of, 228
Toggenburg, Graf von, 217
Tourbillon, castle of, 91
Tschingelhorn, 254

Unspunnen, 224
Unterwalden, 174
Uri, 181, 188

Valais, 83-99
Valeria, castle of, 91
Vaud, 42
Vevey, 57

Vignerons, fete des, 57
Villeneuve, 60
Visp, 85, 93
Vufflens, 55

Wala, Count, 62
Wallenstadt, Lake, 241
Weggis, 184
Weissenberg, 253
Wengern Aip, 226
Wetterhorn, 227
"White Book," 190
Wiggis, 247
Winkelried, Arnold von, 172

Eric 173

Wisling, Dorothea, 179
Wunnenberg, Rudolf von, 217
Wyl, 175
Wyrich, von, 182

YVERDON, 43

ZURBRIGGEN, III
Zurich, 113, 114. 261
Zwingli, Ulrich, 248

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